I'm taking a wait & see attitude - Shapiro is not to blame for Rogers giving him final say on baseball matters - It's interesting in that when Cleveland kicked him up to the Presidency it was rumoured to be partly to get him away from baseball ops. as much as to keep Antonetti.

Looking at Cleveland's draft record with Shapiro as GM is not awe inspiring - a real AA strength - I liked both the approach & results.

Some have mentioned that LaCava or Tinnish may ascend to the GM position - I'd be surprised, this is a chance for Shapiro to bring in his own guy & would LaCava/Tinnish accept the chain of command that AA declined? I would not be surprised if Lacava/Tinnish/Brown all left before spring training.

It's being mentioned that in his 1st meeting with AA and his staff, Shapiro supposedly criticized them for trading away too many prospects especially the Dickey deal - on that score, I have to side with Shapiro.

The main thing AA did well was game draft compensation. This strategy gained substantial excess value. At the time, I thought The Jays were well positioned to become perennial contenders.

Subsequent moves largely squandered that value in an effort to compete. (Marlins, Mets, Rockies and Tigers were high costs for diminishing assets. A's trade netted a young stud, which is good, obviously. Other trades were smaller scale horse trading, and less impactful.)

I always wondered what would have happened if we rode the wave pre-Marlins trade. Let our kids develop and used our finances responsibly (as opposed to absorbing the backloaded contracts of Reyes and Buehrle).

My main motivations for keeping AA would be that: a/ he may have finally figured it out; b/ it is only fair that he would have to navigate the next two off-seasons. The next two off-seasons have obvious challenges, resulting directly from his asset management.

I always wondered what would have happened if we rode the wave pre-Marlins trade. Let our kids develop and used our finances responsibly (as opposed to absorbing the backloaded contracts of Reyes and Buehrle).

It's impossible to know for sure, since we don't know what players the Jays would have brought in. Working with just what was there, the Jays' 2013 starting rotation would have been a huge problem: there would have been J.A. Happ, Henderson Alvarez, Todd Redmond, and maybe Chad Jenkins or Esmil Rogers.

Starting rotation:
Stroman
Happ (did well in Pittsburgh)
Syndergaard (3.24 ERA, but 19 HR allowed - might not do well in Rogers Centre)
Hutchison
DeSclafani (4.05 ERA in Cincinnati) or Nicolino (4.01 ERA in Miami) - probably need to add half a run to that when moving to the AL

I don't think the Jays could have won with that. And as the pitching started to get better, the hitting would have fallen off. And the Longest Drought In Professional Sports [tm] would have extended beyond 22 years.

Ken Rosenthal reported this morning that AA was offered a one-year opt-out that would have let him take a try-and-see approach to determine whether he could work with Shapiro. So the deal offered AA both financial security and flexibility to opt out in the event it wasn't to his liking. It is becoming increasingly difficult to characterize AA's departure as some sort of scenario where he was pushed out. Still a lot of facts that have yet to come out, but Rogers certainly seems to have gone to substantial lengths to keep AA around.

It's really hard to get excited about theseturn of events. The hope is that he surrounds himself with better experts than he had in Cleveland, and that he didn't get this far, this high, by simply playing the corporate game well.

Dave your response to rctaino is not fair at all. He explicitly said that if they hadn't made the trades they would have at least 40 million dollars in cash on hand (the money they took on with Reyes and Buerhle) not to mention the Dickey contract. So probably closer to 60 million. Yet your lineup there has no new players signed. Of course your lineup there isn't good enough. But add in a 20 million starting pitcher, a 15 million starting pitcher and say a 20 million 1B and well that team looks pretty damn awesome.

He also didn't say don't make any trades, just don't make the big four. Mets/Marlins/Rockies/Detroit. So the Donaldson deal might still have happened. The Estrada deal as well, etc. So take your team and add 50-60 million from 3 free agent (or other trades) and then compare. I think we'd look a lot better.

This is what I said in the last thread. Build from within but sign/acquire a couple star vets to lead the team. Leads to a sustainable team that doesn't have multiple players all getting old or leaving at the same time.

Although this news is just breaking now, it is obvious that Anthopolous decided a long time ago that he wasn't coming back, and this week spurned the club's extension offers - offers that he described as generous beyond his expectations. The club didn't want him to go, he wasn't coming back. The fun part (if there is any 'fun' in a good GM leaving) is speculating why.

My own thought is that this is tied entirely to the ousting of Paul Beeston. I had hoped that Beeston was simply retiring at age 70 (I have to wonder where he gets the energy), but that doesn't seem to have been the case. If it was, I think we would have heard it from the horse's mouth.

Instead, we witnessed a public embarrassment of a franchise icon, where his successor's search became public trading proposals. There was also the suggestion in at least one article that Rogers wanted to replace Beeston because they thought Anthopolous should be replaced and Beeston disagreed and wouldn't do it. If that was true, if Rogers was questioning Anthopolous after 2013 as has been reported, I can see where they were coming from. They bought the team ages ago, put up with a the Godfrey/Ricciardi clownshow for almost a decade, cleaned house in 2008 and 2009 when Godfrey knew he wasn't coming back and resigned and Ricciardi was later canned by Beeston, brought back Beeston who hired Anthopolous, and now almost 15 years after buying the team still had a last place major league team at the end of 2013. And after taking on all that salary liability in the Marlins trade. So not unlike Boston bringing in a 'baseball guy' as President after 2 losing seasons (2 seasons in Boston equals two decades in Toronto with the exchange), Rogers decided to have a President who had a baseball background as opposed to a business one.

My own view is that is what ended the Blue Jays/Anthopolous relationship. Alex comes from a wealthy Montreal family. They own businesses and property and are well known local philanthropists. The frequent suggestion a year ago that he would be so desperate to keep his job that it would affect his decisions, didn't seem like a fit for him at all. I think that there was obviously some dissatisfaction above with Paul Beeston's presidency, and it was dissatisfaction that Anthopolous didn't share or appreciate. He would have at least been a target of some of that dissatisfaction. I suspect when Beeston was forced out, Alex decided he was going too and that he had no more intention of working under a 'baseball guy' President, than Ben Cherington did in Boston. I think Alex knew this was coming all summer. This week was just the announcement part. His departure had nothing to do with negotiations.

Did they really think they would just push out Paul Beeston, a guy who bleeds Blue Jay blue and who has done a terrific job as President, and who is by all accounts a terrific person, and that there would be no fallout?

Shapiro won executive of the year twice in his first six years on the job (already beating AA), and more importantly, did most of his work with a bottom 5-10 payroll in baseball. The year he first won 90+ games (2005), the Indians had the 26th highest payroll out of 30 teams. In 2007, when his team made the ALCS, the team was ranked 23rd in payroll.

As far as where the Indians are today, most of their roster is behind the work of their own player development. Gomes, Santana, Kipnis, Lindor, Brantley, Kluber, Salazar, Carrasco, Bauer, Allen, etc, are all guys they either drafted, signed, or acquired via trade when they were prospects. Whether you want to give Shapiro or his GM credit for that is immaterial because he'll be doing the same job in Toronto as he did with the Cleveland the last five years. He'll handpick his GM and presumably have say in baseball operations like he's always had to some degree.

People are really overvaluing Alex and undervaluing Shapiro. I feel bad for Shapiro not only because of what was mentioned in this thread already (if they win AA gets the praise/if they lose Shapiro gets the blame), but for some reason fans don't seem to realize that this window the Jays currently have extends to 2016 and that's it. The team would have had to do some type of retooling effort in 2017 even if AA was still here. So now if the team takes a step back in 2017 (which they likely would have if AA was still here), then people will pile on Shapiro for it.

One has to wonder if Rogers didn't suffer from a kind of two-mindedness before the season ended. If they had planned to give Shapiro the right to make all future player decisions, then why did they let the outgoing GM make so many decisions that were going to have such a huge impact on their future? Did they really believe Anthopoulos would stay on as some kind of underling? They had half an ass on one horse and half an ass on the other...which is no way to ride a horse(s). Whatever Shapiro decides he wishes to do, his decisions will be dramatically impacted by what Anthopoulos did in his last few months on the job. Either Rogers believed in Anthopoulos or they believed in Shapiro. The most likely scenario was that they didn't know what the hell they were doing.

I was mainly going off this recap, because I keep hearing he's a good baseball guy, meanwhile the fans and media in Cleveland are not very happy with what he did, and confused why he is so well regarded in some circles.

There payroll was probably a big factor but with those parameters in play you'd hope that they would be a lot better at drafting and developing prospects than they did. I guess I'm just not seeing where his real value lies.

I've got to agree CDBC, and certainly listening to AA on McCown it sounded like he was willfully not commenting on the treatment of Beeston and his diminished authority.

Beyonder, I don't get your desire to defend Rogers here? Sure, they may have offered him a one-year contract as a trial - I hadn't heard about that til your post - and by all accounts they offered him a generous five year package (AA himself has said this repeatedly) but those factors are irrelevant if, as the majority of journalists and fans are speculating, AA's decision was a matter of principle either around Beeston's mistreatment (again, a universally-held view) or his own diminished authority under Shapiro.

I'm not disputing that, as you say "Rogers certainly seems to have gone to substantial lengths to keep AA around". I think everyone, including Ed Rogers and the whole management team, would concede that this mess started last year with the attempts to replace Beeston. They knew it would be a PR disaster to not retain AA, so they did their best.

I didn't know it was possible to dislike this ownership more than I did a week ago, but wow ... I only hope that Rogers feels some sort of pressure to assuage the fan base by ponying up for guys like Price. It feels so wrong that after our best run in 2+ decades, we as a fan base have once more been disheartened. I think TO sports fans in general have something of a persecution complex (which is understandable given that we have for the entire millenium ranked poorly on cities where it sucks to be a sports fan) and this is only going to worsen that.

Shapiro was the GM from 2002-10, and then the president from 2011-15. By that time, the Indians cut payroll substantially to the point where they were a bottom 5-10 payroll team every season. I'm not sure how much blame you can put on Shapiro for that. AA had a top 10 payroll in baseball the last three seasons and it took trading a whole heap of prospects/young talent (Syndergaard, TDA, Alvarez, Hech, Marisnick, Nicolino, Desclafani, Gomes, Norris, Hoffman, Castro, Boyd, and so on) combined with that payroll to get the team to where they are now. I'm not sure it's even a fair comparison. If Shapiro had AA's payroll in Cleveland, would things be different? Probably. Can't really say for sure, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

More than anything else, Shapiro brings a very sabermetric driven philosophy. He's been quoted as such. He was also in the Indians org during the John Hart years where they focused on player development and locking up their own core guys rather than spending on free agency. Even in Shapiro's final few years in Cleveland as team president they stuck with that philosophy (signing guys like Kluber, Carrasco, Gomes, etc, to deals that looks like absolute steals now).

Shapiro is a good baseball guy, and losing AA is far from the end of the world.

I mean who knows really why he left. I can't help thinking that part of it that like Gillick he wants to leave on top. After next year things might be less favourable for this franchise. This was a pretty punchy finish you know even tho we didn't quite get to the Series. It's going to be hard to beat that.

I've always been a strong AA supporter. I really loved all the moves he made when they were made except the Price move which I thought was really rash at the time. (Now of course I'd take back the Dickey trade and I feel a lot better about the Price move.)

But somehow I don't feel that sad that he's gone. He had a tremendous influence. He did great things. He's leaving on an upswing. I actually feel kind of good about it for him. He's got a great story and he's going to be fine.

I also don't feel too bad for the franchise either. Let's see what the next one can do. Let's bring in some new bright GM and give them a chance to run with this thing for a while. I'm up for the ride.

I could care less about Rogers. But based on the facts I see before me, I don't see this situation as anything different than when we coddled Al Leiter along for years, and then he finally had a great season and left for free agency (apologies if I remember that wrong). And I don't really understand why the sentiment is so different when it comes to management leaving.

"if, as the majority of journalists and fans are speculating, AA's decision was a matter of principle".

I suppose if I accepted that speculation, I would agree with those fans and journalists. But I don't.

Whether it is money or power, AA left because he thinks he can do better elsewhere -- even if he has to wait a year. And no, there's no evidence for this view. It's just based on what I think is an obvious human trait -- that people pursue what they see as better situations for themselves. Personally, in those circumstances the tears and choked-up interviews are a bit rich for my taste.

Here's a round-up of analysis and commentary today from the journalists
who cover the Jays. Some of these journalists, I know, are not
universally loved by Bauxites, but I think their views are worth
considering, since they watch the Jays daily and have contacts in the
organization and talk to people in the organization. Their views range
from neutral to scathingly negative. I don't see a single commentator
who is praising the owners for their handing of this. At best, some
journalists are saying "it's too early to judge the impact" or "there's a
chance that AA's replacement might be as good as he is." But most of
these analysts are saying that it's a big blunder by the owners and an
act of sheer incompetence. Here are some excerpts:

Bob McCown: "In retrospect, it was a mistake to hire Shapiro. It was done when they didn't know what this team would be." (https://twitter.com/Baseball_Jenn/status/659850048138670080)

Bruce Arthur -- "Never underestimate this cityís ability to
turn sports into farce. Anthopoulos had authored a fabulous season,
something unbelievable. He loved it here. His kids were born here. Itís
his dream job, at eye-popping money. He wanted to stay. But he decided he couldnít, and now heís gone.
This was the end of a very long, blind, careless fuse lit last year by
Rogers Communications, whose stewardship of this franchise finally
blundered into success this season. It was, as endings go, ridiculous.
Ownership never appreciated what they had. They didnít know what they
were doing. They failed. Major League Baseball steered them to Shapiro,
and they never changed course, even after the storm took them by
surprise. The problem is not just that Alex Anthopoulos is gone,
precisely: the graveyards, as they say, are full of indispensable men.
Itís that the owners of this team took the incredible joy and frenzy
this team generated, and turned it into this. They gave their new
president a furious fan base, and employees who spent time Thursday
crying at their desks. The pressure on Mark Shapiro is now immense, and
any parachute he had is gone." (http://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/2015/10/29/blue-jays-ownership-responsible-for-this-ridiculous-ending-arthur.html)

John Lott -- "The
only conclusion is that this was about power and autonomy.
If we take Anthopoulos at his word Ė that he made no requests regarding
autonomy over baseball decisions Ė then this much seems clear: He saw
the writing on the wall. Shapiro sat down and laid out his agenda.
It included a degree of
power over baseball operations that Anthopoulos was unwilling to cede to
the new president. Anthopoulos, who is only 38, kept saying the job he
had kept for six
years was no longer ďthe right fit.Ē He kept saying that no one wanted
this to happen. Shapiro is the new boss. Anthopoulos did not feel he
could work for the new boss. This happens in business all the time. It
rarely happens after a
business rakes in record profits and a flock of new shareholders, and
endears itself to its client base for the first time in a generation." (http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/mlb/alex-anthopoulos-saw-the-writing-on-the-wall-with-toronto-blue-jays)

Stephen Brunt -- "Anthopoulos (had been) granted a significant degree of autonomy in running
the baseball side of the business. There were payroll parameters, and
occasionally Beeston or ownership intervened to push or block a trade or
a signing. But beyond that, Anthopoulos could shape the organization as
he liked, hire the field manager he wanted, and make whatever deals he
could as long as he didnít spend outside the bounds of his budget.
It wasnít going to be like that anymore, and Anthopoulos knew it. He
knew it as far back as last fall, when stories surfaced about the
possible hiring of Dan Duquette or Kenny Williams as team president Ė
both of them with baseball operations pedigrees..... He could have stuck around and taken the money and the term, and if he
had, no one would have blamed him. But he knew better than anyone that
itís a different place now, one where he wouldnít feel so at home, and
one where he wouldnít have the final say. A worse place? Well, letís wait and see what happens." (http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/anthopoulos-exit-a-product-of-blue-jays-culture-shift/)

Bob Elliott -- describes the move as "shameful" and adds this: "Now, Eddie Rogers has done something we did not think was possible,
topping the bungled December-January search for a new president while
president Paul Beeston was in office. The Rogers spin doctors will try to sell this that the Jays were a
.500 team when they began talking to Shapiro in June or July and the GM
deserved to be fired. Maybe so, but the AL East changed at the July 31 deadline. And Fast
Eddie and his crew interviewed Dave Dombrowski 10 days into August after
he was let go by the Detroit Tigers and before he was hired by the Red
Sox. By then the Jays were in first and it was apparent that the trade deadline moves had worked." (http://www.torontosun.com/2015/10/29/jays-not-getting-anthopoulos-to-re-sign-is-shameful

Scott Stinson -- "By the time the Blue Jays made it to the American League Championship
Series, the concern was all but gone. Yes, ownership had acquitted
themselves like fools in December and January, but surely they would not
oversee something as stupid as the departure of Alex Anthopoulos, the
architect of the teamís only success in recent memory, before fans have
even taken the Jays flags off their car windows? It turns out they are that stupid. One can only imagine the
conversation between team chair Edward Rogers and his lieutenants now:
Good thing we didnít win the World Series! That would have made this
really awkward! But perhaps we should not be surprised. It was Team Rogers, after all,
that began searching for an executive to replace Paul Beeston as team
president by trying to poach Kenny Williams from the Chicago White Sox, a
team owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, who happens to be a close friend of
Beeston. Trying to push out a long-time employee by surreptitiously
contacting one of his confidants: thatís some shrewd management right
there."
(http://news.nationalpost.com/sports/mlb/alex-anthopoulos-toronto-blue-jays-departure-a-failure-by-ownership-and-not-a-surprising-one)

Richard Griffin -- "Rogers
is proving they are bad baseball people.... The insulting
responsibility offer to Anthopoulos was akin to the man
who built a business being asked to come back as an executive assistant.
Loyalty with the Blue Jays is not a two-way street, it's a
cul-de-sac..... The unfortunate thing for the Jays' ownership image is
that all the
while they were planning a new direction, their own man, Alex
Anthopoulos was learning his business Ė and very well. If the Jays had
made the new-president move in December, when their well-guarded
intentions to harpoon Beeston were first revealed, calling White Sox
executive V-P Kenny Williams on his office phone and O's V-P and GM Dan
Duquette without going through MLB protocol, that could be construed as
just awkward and clumsy. But in the ensuing 11 months since that time,
as the ever-maturing Anthopoulos put together a post-season threat and
made outrageous deals for third-baseman Josh Donaldson and catcher
Russell Martin, plus under-the-radar deals for pitcher Marco Estrada and
second baseman Devon Travis, what had been awkward and clumsy by Rogers
became just plain dumb."
(http://www.thestar.com/sports/blue_jays_baseball_blog/2015/10/-to-say-alex-anthopoulos-rejected-an-extension-from-blue-jays-is-ridiculous-griffin.html)

"....It is becoming increasingly difficult to characterize AA's departure as some sort of scenario where he was pushed out..."

There's really nobody serious among the professional analysts who would agree with this comment. Of course he was pushed out. He was doing his dream job, he loved it and he wanted to stay. Nobody disputes this. He has stated publicly that he fully envisioned himself as the Toronto GM for many years to come, including when Vladdy Guerrero Jr. reached the majors. (Unless you think he is lying? Why would he lie about that?) The owners tried desperately to improve their offer when they realized that he would leave, but adding a one-year "out" clause (and lengthening the offer from 2 years to 5 years) is really meaningless, when compared to the essential reality that AA was losing his baseball autonomy -- the most important aspect of his job. As many commentators have noted in the excerpts in my last post, the owners were insulting AA by proposing that he become -- in effect -- the assistant to Shapiro on baseball matters, rather than calling the shots as he previously did. It means that AA was pushed out. How else can it possibly be interpreted?

Now, some people here are saying that AA just did what was best for himself. In terms of semantics, that's correct: when faced with the grim reality of his options, he obviously had to do what was best for himself. He was faced with a choice between a bad situation at the Jays and a potentially better situation if he becomes a GM somewhere else -- because in another job he could negotiate the autonomy that he was losing under Shapiro. So, yes, he did what was best for himself, because otherwise he would be in a losing situation, losing autonomy and losing the most important aspect of his job. That doesn't mean, in any way, that AA wanted to leave. He only WANTED to leave when he realized what a losing situation he was being offered by the owners.

Regarding AA. and his accomplishments.
1) Success in drafting hard throwing HS pitchers in large quantities.But he has to wait 5 years or so for them to be ML ready.
2) Not many University draft picks. So limited success. No. Maybe great success, based on numbers. Stroman, very good and maybe 5 others. Dyson, Pillar, Boyd, Graveman & Hoffman +.
3) Pick high upside players that falls to you for various reasons. Hoffman, Pentecost, Tellez, Smoral etc...
4) Trades based on results : V Wells & J Donaldson, incredible. Tulo & Price, good I guess, but the price was high IMO. All the other trades were not clear wins IMO, but that is debatable.

His drafts needed time to be ML ready. So suffer/wait out this period, this seems obvious to me. I think that waiting period was a big mistake by AA. The results on the field created speculation about the safety of his job.
IMO, AA has a lot of self confidence in his abilities. I think that he does have great abilities. But he made huge mistakes, IMO. I think that was due to youth and inexperience.

So what mistakes did he make? IMO.

1) I liked the 2010 team, over achievers with 85 wins. But never in contention, TB 96 & NYY 95 wins. I believe that Cito & AA clashed but I cannot back this up with facts. Dana Eveland, Merkin Valdez and J Accardo were not Cito's choice to be on the team but AA's choice. But I cannot back that up, Valdez & Accardo hardly pitched at all. I believe that Cito grumbled about the 6 man rotation in Sept because he disagreed with 5 days between starts, again I do not know how to reach back in history to prove it. JPA was not used as much as most people, including myself wanted. So I willingly accept any critisism about these facts/personal opinion. Both men have good characters. Cito was a class act and AA has a great ability to say good/positive things about everyone. So was Cito forced out or did he leave willingly? What was it and who decided what? We do not know, but IMO Cito was forced out. So AA had to hire a new manager.

2) Lack of pitching depth hurt this team. In 2010 the youth came through big time in the rotation with results and durability. The pen did very well without an elite closer.
2011 The JoJo Reyes experiment & injuries exposed lack of depth in the pitching. The same in 2012, 13,14 & 15, but with different names.
Namely Romero, Cecil, Morrow Josh Johnson and others. This lack of depth was discussed in depth by many Bauxites. The 6th-9th SP options and the 7th-15th bullpen options. I loved those discussions.

The team was mediocre/bad after that until the last 2 months. The last 2 months of his tenure put AA over the top with a winning overall record.

So now it is Shapiro's time to make this team successful.

How good a product is he inheriting? The rotation and budget are question marks.
Shapiro complained about the departure of many prospects. Will he trade more prospects to fill in the rotation?

If we are going to talk about Shapiro's contract extensions, you've got to include the Hafner and Sizemore deals, which were pretty bad value for the Indians, and he was president when Antonetti signed Michael Bourn and nick swisher to some pretty bad deals. Even the Gomes deal remains uncertain as an extension - it's not clearly a steal - he was injured and struggled in 2015, let's wait to see how he comes back before calling that a win.

It's the same with AA - an aggressive trader is going to hit HRs (Wells), SO (Dickey) and let's throw in a fluky inside the park HR (Bautista - surely this deal, attributed to AA, is a superior fluke to the Yan Gomes deal). an aggressive 'lock-up the homegrown talent' guy is going to save money on some guys and blow some elsewhere.

It seems like Cleveland fans have really turned on Shapiro - is this an inevitability in this day and age of relentless media coverage of teams? My friend who is a casual A's fan seems to think Billy Beane is an utter idiot ....

Overall, Shapiro appears like AA to me, a few years further along - bright sabremetric guy with some successes and some failures on his resume. By all accounts, the baseball experience for fans at the game in cleveland has been improved under his watch, so if he could pull that off at the Dome I'd be thrilled.

My one major concern was raised by 85bluejay: "Looking at Cleveland's draft record with Shapiro as GM is not awe
inspiring - a real AA strength". His draft record as GM is pretty darn weak.... only Lonnie Chisenhall and Jeremy Guthrie were 1st rounders from that era that made any sort of contribution at all. Upon a cursory review, he actually reminds me of JPR in his drafts - a lot of college guys and less of a focus on pitching / up the middle players than we have seen with AA. Just to randomly pick a year, I don't recognize a solitary major leaguer from 2007 (well, he did draft one matt hague, but he didn't sign). In fact, he signed only 6 picks from rounds 16-50.

I would say that 'not awe inspiring' is highly complimentary of Shaprio. an interesting blog post on his record, comparing a list of 11 small market teams concluded thusly:

"Shaprio's drafts produced
only 8.79% of players to make The Show, had a respectable WAR drafted of
93.4, but only 23 players with meaningful service time.

However, there is a statistical outlier that needs to be addressed.
Included in Cleveland's draft is Tim Lincecum, who accounts for all the
award seasons and a good chunk of WAR. As he didn't sign and re-entered
the next year, if you disregard his contribution, Cleveland's slightly
bad drafts become a whole lot worse. They would be the only team with
exactly zero Awards seasons drafted. Not one All-Star, no Gold Gloves.
Nada. Zero. Zip. Their WAR would drop by 23.9 putting them at 69.9
(in front of only Seattle at 68.2 and Miami at 59.5). As a result,
their final standing would put them in dead last."

I am strongly hoping that the Jays promote a GM from within and maintain the farm team / scouting / drafting structure- AA's undeniable, massive advantage over Shapiro is drafting. Keep that team intact and I will be able to stomach this move. If Shapiro wants to play a major role in drafting, I think I might look into buying Toronto rock tickets. No wonder he 'scolded' AA and his team about trading prospects - under Shapiro, they are a rare commodity.

"There's nobody serious among professional analysts who agree with this comment."

Another argument from authority. I've read those other views. Most of them I don't share.

"Of course he was pushed out".

Begging the question: assuming what you plan to prove.

"He was doing his dream job..."

Maybe. That's certainly what he said for many years.

"he fully envisioned himself as the Toronto GM for many years"

But on his own terms.

"The owners tried desperately to improve their offer when they realized he would leave"

Again, unless I've missed something, we don't have any idea when they made that offer, how long it was open for acceptance for, or the reason for making it. This is another example of you filling in what should be a blank, with a story conducive with your theory.

"by adding a one-year opt-out clause ... is really meaningless"

I can't imagine why it would be meaningless. It gives AA an out if the situation ends up being as bad as he fears. My own read is that this is only something you would offer as an employer if you believed that AA and Shapiro were going to be able to co-exist if only they would give it a try.

"compared to the essential reality that AA was losing his baseball autonomy"

You really need to stop characterizing your own views as essential reality. And again, you are assuming precisely what you are setting out to prove -- that AA lost his autonomy.

"As many commentators noted..."

Other people's opinions are not evidence.

Notice that not in any of my responses have I called any of your views ridiculous or absurd or insulting. You may in fact be right. But a lot of the views you hold are certainly not evidence-based, which is what you criticize many others for.

Actually, I wasn't responding to him - I was going off on my own tangent. I do that a lot. :-)

Rogers is usually the default villain on Toronto baseball comment boards in pretty close to the same reflexive way that Obama is on southern talk radio shows.

The problem is that many of us are used to dealing with Rogers as a cable TV or Internet provider. So there's a bias against Rogers as owners that wouldn't exist if the Jays were owned by Random Large Corporation We've Never Heard Of, Inc. (RLCWNHO).

Here's a round-up of analysis and commentary today from the journalists who cover the Jays.

Thanks for all the info!

On second thought, what I realize is this: I don't really know what the president of a baseball club normally does. Do they normally behave like Beeston, or do they normally want more input into personnel decisions, as Shapiro appears to want, leaving the GM in more of a subordinate role?

My guess is that Beeston was an unusual club executive (in a good way), and was more willing to take a hands-off approach to his job. So AA might have had more autonomy than is normal, making this basically a dream job for a GM. Compare the Jays to teams where the owner has more direct influence on his or her team - for instance, AA would have had a vastly different experience if he was a GM for Steinbrenner's Yankees or Peter Angelos's Orioles.

Outside the 1st round, most GM's don't draft. They do approve signing or not signing picks made by their scouting directors. The directors are aided by their scouting staff in deciding their draft board and recommend how much they think the draftee is worth.

An appeal to authority, obviously, does not mean that any citation of 'authoratative' opinions/arguments is fallacious. The Nizkor project, a decent source on fallacies, states it thusly "this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context.

ChinaFan has cited 7 well-connected local journalists with reasonably solid credentials at worst He is not omitting contrary journalistic positions, those listed are familiar as experts (or at least knowledgeable) to the audience he is addressing, they are unbiased and essentially agree with one another. It's not objective proof - but that's an impossible standard here.

cybercavalier why does yours and Dave Tills posts suggest that in light of not trading a bunch of prospects that we also just don't use the money that we saved by not dealing for those guys.

So lets say add Donaldson to your lineup there (we still had all the pieces to make that trade) and add lets say one mid/top tier starter and one mid/top tier bat to it.

You can't just say "this is the team that how it will look with no trades" and just omit the fact that the teams you're putting out there has like an 80 million dollar payroll. What would you do with 55 more million dollars on top of that lineup you posted cyber? Because that is what taking on Reyes and Buerhle and Dickey cost us. Flexibility to sign players (or do specific trades if you have to) to improve our lineup in other ways.

These are not "opinions" or "views" as you constantly claim. These are reporters who are reporting the facts. They are providing historical chronology, dates, data, widely accepted facts about specific moves that Rogers has made, clear facts about Shapiro's job description (including his authority over baseball operations), the clear fact that AA had baseball autonomy for the past six years and the clear fact that he would be losing this autonomy in the future under Shapiro. This not speculation or "opinion" -- this is reported fact with empirical evidence.

You have not responded with a single piece of evidence of your own. Endlessly repeating the phrase "opinion, opinion" is not a counter-argument. Provide some evidence of your own. Please provide even a single person who says that Shapiro will not have ultimate baseball authority. Find a single respected source who says that AA's autonomy would not be diminished. Find a single source who suggests that AA would be happy as the number-two baseball guy on the Jays after being the number-one baseball guy for years. Find a single source who suggests that he could happily "try it out for a year" when he already knows that Rogers have promised the ultimate baseball authority to Shapiro. It's you, not me, who has failed to provide evidence.

Not at all. CF cut and paste a series of opinion pieces by pundits with ranging credibility. It is the job of most of these pundits to create clickbait or at the very least say something provocative. With the exception of John Lott (if he was in there), I don't see any of them as being any more wise than some of the better posters on this forum. It is their job to lay bare their reasoning, and assuming they have done so, I don't see any actual reasons for supposing that AA was pushed out.

"...I don't really know what the president of a baseball club normally does.
Do they normally behave like Beeston, or do they normally want more
input into personnel decisions, as Shapiro appears to want, leaving the
GM in more of a subordinate role?...."

Dave, that's a very good question. And there isn't a simple answer, because each "president" negotiates his own package and then behaves in his own style. His powers depend on what he negotiates. But it's important to note that Shapiro was already the president in Cleveland, and he was lured to Toronto with a better package, which certainly includes more than just a higher salary. He had a very good job in Cleveland and didn't need to leave it -- he was courted by Toronto and this gave him the power to ask for greater authority and responsibilities. It stands to reason that he used his bargaining power to demand more authority than Beeston had. It's been widely reported and accepted as fact that Shapiro has been given the final authority on baseball decisions, and that this is something greater than what Beeston had (or certainly more than what Beeston chose to exercise in practical reality).

As you noted, it's quite probable that Beeston was a little more laid-back and relaxed that Shapiro. In some ways, Shapiro might be a more energetic and efficient president than Beeston, but he also wouldn't be as willing to let the GM have as much baseball autonomy. This is partly a result of personality, and partly a result of official job powers that he negotiated.

Now, in practice, would Shapiro have allowed AA to make most of the day-to-day baseball decisions? Perhaps yes, most of the time. But he might also have interfered, or set a general path for the Jays personnel decisions that AA might not have agreed with, and AA obviously was worried that this would happen. And I'm sure he had good reason to know that Shapiro, with the personality and powers that he has, wouldn't be nearly as laid-back as Beeston and wouldn't give AA the autonomy that he cherished.

If I want to argue with Richard Griffin, I'll join his chat. I'm here, so I'm interested in your reasons for holding your views. If you want to adopt someone else reasons, that's fine too. Just explain to me what they are and why you adopt them. But don't just dump 7 articles in front of me and say QED.

"It's you, not me, who has failed to provide evidence."

Remember, it is your view that AA was pushed out. It is my view that we don't know either way. Why do you think the onus is on me to prove that we don't have the data required to make that call? What would that even mean?

"But based on the facts I see before me, I don't see this situation as anything different than when we coddled Al Leiter along for years, and then he finally had a great season and left for free agency (apologies if I remember that wrong). And I don't really understand why the sentiment is so different when it comes to management leaving."

Well said. I liked AA and wished he stayed but the outcry over His departure is over the top. Interesting to compare it to Gillick's...people were disappointed but reaction was fairly muted. And he was a proven superstar- 10+ years of highly competitive teams...vs 1 so far for AA.

It's so long since this city had a playoff contender they deify the first GM that gets us there in 22 years. Meanwhile 85% of the rest of the league also made the playoffs during AA's reign. It's not that high a bar folks!!!

The sun will presumably rise again. Shapiro will (presumably after he starts working on Monday) hire at least one new person and then perhaps others. The new GM may be the second coming of Branch Rickey or the second coming of Dave Littlefield. Hopefully, the new GM will be closer to the former. In the meanwhile, it's probably a good idea to tone down the criticism.

Beyonder, you acknowledge John Lott as an expert - his comment from China's post- "The
only conclusion is that this was about power and autonomy.

Say what you want about Griff - I'll likely agree with much of it - but surely you would at least agree that guys like Brunt, Arthur and Elliott have access to insiders / information that we internet fans lack? Heck, McCown invited AA over for dinner during his interview yesterday - it seems nutty to me to dismiss their opinions as being no better or worse than those of Joe Bauxite. You are requiring an impossible evidentiary standard from CF. I'd say that it's because you couldn't find the equivalent 'evidence' for your position, but then I'd be projecting a selfish motivating principal to you from a distance and I've already spoken out against that practice ;)

jerjapan : "If we are going to talk about Shapiro's contract extensions, you've got to include the Hafner and Sizemore deals, which were pretty bad value for the Indians, and he was president when Antonetti signed Michael Bourn and nick swisher to some pretty bad deals. Even the Gomes deal remains uncertain as an extension - it's not clearly a steal - he was injured and struggled in 2015, let's wait to see how he comes back before calling that a win."

Not every deal is going to pan out, but I disagree completely about Sizemore. He signed his extension prior to the 2006 season. It was a 6 year, $23.4 million deal. From 2006-09, he accumulated a 23.8 WAR, which according to Fangraphs amounted to $137.2 million in total value over that span. He basically produced five times the value of the contract in four years. We don't know how much money the Indians saved by locking him up, but I think it's safe to say his arbitration years in 2008-10 would have been very expensive. Hafner was a mistake, though.

As far as Gomes, again, if you want to go by Fangraphs, he already surpassed the value of his contract ($23m) in 2014 alone (4.5 WAR, $34.1m of value, and that's excluding framing stats). We will see on the rest of his career. It was definitely very early to lock him up but when you notice someone with a very undervalued (at the time) skillset, some times it's better to lock him up cheaply rather than wait for the rest of the league to catch on. The Jays paid Martin $82M two years later and all we heard about was framing after that. The Indians were ahead of that curve.

I'm not saying Shapiro was perfect or anything. I'm saying he values analytics far more than AA does/did, and he's been in situations where he's had a bottom 5 to 10 payroll every year which made it increasingly difficult to keep talent or add talent. Now he comes into a situation where he can plaster his sabermetric philosophy all over the organization all while having a payroll of a top 10 team. Will it work? Who the heck knows.

I disagree that AA was a sabermetric guy. Until last off-season, he never really had any of those tendencies. It looks like AA came around on it in 2015 but unfortunately it was about 4 or 5 years too late.

I'm arguing, but I don't see myself as holding a view one way or the other. I've already said very clearly that CF's thesis may be right. But right now we just don't know. AA could have left to spend time with his kids; he could have left in an ill-fated butch Carter-esque power grab gone awry; he could have left because he wanted to be president somewhere else; he could have left because Rogers wanted to make him a figurehead; or he could've left simply because he realized his bargaining position would likely never be better that it currently is. Or a combination of those things.

If asking for reasons is an impossible evidentiary standard, then maybe we need to consider why we hold the view in the first place.

If it's about power, I think it is an interesting question to ask why we see AA's refusal to accept a diminution of his role differently than we see Jose Reyes's (alleged) refusal to move to second base.

Until recently, I was a Gibbons guy. I thought he did a horrible job of managing the pitching staff. He did not show much trust in his staff, even when up 7 runs!

The good news is that Gibbons could be gone.

The bad news is that the established relationships with people like Price and Estrada are brand new. I am not sure if that is good or bad, but since it looks like turmoil, it is probably scaring them off.

My goodness, let's try and gain some perspective on this. We have a 38 year old man who doesn't like the terms of a job he's been offered, and so he turns it down - fair play to him. I salute him for acting with dignity in public (an examply many commenters on this board, myself included, ought to learn from), for being apparently motivated by principle, and thank him for contributing to the most exciting part-season I've had as a sports fan in living memory. But he wasn't being asked to clean toilets for minimum wage, and we shouldn't pretend that he was.

On the other hand, we have an organization that decided, rightly or wrongly (and certainly hamhandedly) but on the basis of six years of observation, to reinforce baseball operations with a highly respected name at a not inconsiderable price (which, frankly, is the kind of move many would have thought Rogers too cheap and disinterested in the performance of the club to pursue). Two months of phenomenal baseball is nice, but in baseball of all sports we ought to be wary of small sample sizes, and it would be a mistake to overlook the fact that the club did very little on his watch before August 1st 2015 and faces serious challenges beyond 2016, many of which were exacerbated at the deadline. Like everyone in life, his record is mixed, and no employer (particularly a public company) ought to give any of its employees a blank check. It's a shame Shapiro and Anthopoulous couldn't find a way to to work together, but I don't know whose fault that it is and neither does anyone else.

"My goodness, let's try and gain some perspective on this. We have a 38 year old man who doesn't like the terms of a job he's been offered, and so he turns it down - fair play to him. I salute him for acting with dignity in public (an examply many commenters on this board, myself included, ought to learn from), for being apparently motivated by principle, and thank him for contributing to the most exciting part-season I've had as a sports fan in living memory. But he wasn't being asked to clean toilets for minimum wage, and we shouldn't pretend that he was.

On the other hand, we have an organization that decided, rightly or wrongly (and certainly hamhandedly) but on the basis of six years of observation, to reinforce baseball operations with a highly respected name at a not inconsiderable price (which, frankly, is the kind of move many would have thought Rogers too cheap and disinterested in the performance of the club to pursue). Two months of phenomenal baseball is nice, but in baseball of all sports we ought to be wary of small sample sizes, and it would be a mistake to overlook the fact that the club did very little on his watch before August 1st 2015 and faces serious challenges beyond 2016, many of which were exacerbated at the deadline. Like everyone in life, his record is mixed, and no employer (particularly a public company) ought to give any of its employees a blank check. It's a shame Shapiro and Anthopoulous couldn't find a way to to work together, but I don't know whose fault that it is and neither does anyone else. "

This is a golden post, find a way to pin it to the top of this board. Anyone who says AA did a bad job is nuts, he did great. But for us to lose our heads and talk about how bad Rogers is and how they messed up this entire situation is very short sighted in my opinion.

And remember, this was a decision made at a time when AA had a resume without the Price/Tulo/Bullpen trades and post season run. That makes a HUGE difference. Random unrelated example in my mind -It's like you go off to the war and you're reported dead, then your wife decides to remarry and have children and then you end up surviving, come back home to find your wife remarried with children, and everyone in the world says that the new husband is a terrible person and that the wife screwed up everything. Context people, it's a situation that happened awkwardly and to put blame on any one party is wrong in my opinion.

Bottom line to me is that the past few months (hiring of new president/trying to keep AA) shows that Rogers is fully committed to winning.

When looking at the journalists, take a broad stroke...Griffin/Elliot/McCown are all close friends of Beeston and have been throwing Rogers under a bus for ages.

Interbrew... you mean InBev... no, you mean, Anheuser-Busch InBev. The owner of 25% of the world's beer market share.
Speaking of Rogers and a hate on -- it would be nice if they spun off the Jays (and the dome) independently with a portion of the media business on par with these guys.
I am not sure what would spur Rogers to do that, but I can't see a downside of more autonomy for the Jays as a fan.

I think people, both fans and reporters, have gone nuts with AA love. He did a great job, but Shapiro has 2 EOY vs AA's 1. The Jays front office has a couple of guys who have been touted as likely GM's for years (since before AA was named Jays GM) and now one of them might get the shot.

Remember, when AA was named GM most went 'who' and others went 'crap, Rogers cheaping out again'.

My own read is that this is only something you would offer as an
employer if you believed that AA and Shapiro were going to be able to
co-exist if only they would give it a try.

That's one possible reason, but there are others, such as trying to find any bone to throw AA in an effort to save themselves from having him leave. Based on what's been said publicly, there is no compelling reason to believe one over the other, aside from personal biases and belief, at least in my opinion.

It's a shame Shapiro and Anthopoulous couldn't find a way to to work together,

Agreed on this point for sure - IMO AA's biggest strength is drafting, Shapiro's biggest weakness.

I would like to hear more from people about what is good about Shapiro? Two exec of the year awards but some pretty bad teams as well (albeit with a very low payroll). The cleveland farm system ranks around 20th in MLB. they have some good, young, cost-controlled talent. 3 playoff appearances in the fifteen years with Shapiro as GM or prez, one series win. Some good, some bad deets.

It's his drafting record that makes me nervous though - seriously, take a look at the drafts under him, as I've outlined in previous posts. Sure, as pointed out earlier the GM isn't necessarily actively involved in most pics past the first few, but he assembles the team that is, helps establish the drafting philosophy, etc ....

"If it's about power, I think it is an interesting question to ask why we see AA's refusal to accept a diminution of his role differently than we see Jose Reyes's (alleged) refusal to move to second base."

I think the difference is completely obvious. AA was at the very top of his game, so to speak, if you indeed want to go comparing front office executives to players. Reyes' apparent refusal (alleged) to move to second base was because he was declining, something that could be proven clearly, both by by metrics and astute observation. He was also aging, and we know that defense declines with age, particularly in the middle of the field.

Would you ask Josh Donaldson to move to first base in 2016? No. And while I disagree with your methodology for comparing players to executives, this would be a more accurate comparison than the one you entertain.

Speaking of Rogers and a hate on -- it would be nice if they spun off the Jays (and the dome) independently with a portion of the media business on par with these guys. I am not sure what would spur Rogers to do that, but I can't see a downside of more autonomy for the Jays as a fan.

It is entirely obvious what would spur Rogers to do that. It's called the market.

Dirk Hayhurst on the move: "This may not have been the way Jays fans expected the postseason to
start, but it's far from bad news. In fact, it may be the catalyst for a
more sustainable, competitive team for many years to come."

And Cathal Kelley, who asked AA 6 weeks back if he was coming back and got an "I'm not sure". The rest of the quote: " He also hadn't talked to
ownership. Ever. Mr. Anthopoulos said that up to that point in his six
years as general manager of the Blue Jays, he had never had a single
conversation with anyone up the Rogers food chain. Not team chairman
Edward Rogers or new Rogers Media boss Rick Brace. No one. Outgoing
president Paul Beeston was his sole point of contact with his employers.

Based on what's been said publicly, there is no compelling reason to believe one over the other

What are the 'two sides'? All I have heard is that Alex has confirmed the length of the contract offer (5 years), confirmed that both Rogers and Shapiro made strong efforts to have him stay, mentioned that Edward Rogers himself intervened and was generous and beseeching in his efforts to have him remain, and that he turned down the job of GM with the Blue Jays. What are the 'two sides'? Some are trying to characterize these facts as an 'ouster' but as Beyonder has pointed out, that is simply representing one's own characterization (often by adding the word 'obviously') as a fact.
I don't really see two sides. I think Alex wanted to leave, whether it was over the treatment of Beeston, or the fact that he didn't get the President of Baseball Ops job, or the fact that there might now be in place what could be viewed as an operational supervisor where there wasn't one before. And he's leaving. It's a sad outcome, but the reflexive urge to blame Rogers doesn't really add much.

t is entirely obvious what would spur Rogers to do that. It's called the market.
...no it is not obvious that the above move would make sense for Rogers as currently run. Sure market forces could make the move appealing but how those animal spirits get whipped up outside of the hardcore Jays fanbase? That's another question.

Heard part of AA's conversation with Blair today - interesting tidbit to me - AA said the majority of his FO team voted no to the Tulowitzki deal because they wanted to use those prospects to acquire a starter - of course, AA pulled the trigger anyways. Would be interested to learn whom the Jays offered Cleveland for Carlos Carrasco.

Bruce Arthur said in an article in the Star that the initial contract offer was for two years with the second year an option and that Shapiro disagreed with the deadline choices. Says the 5 year offer came later. It doesn't say when the initial contract offer was made.

Actually dalimon5, a more representative analogy (although still inappropriate) would see the husband go off to war and the wife, presuming that he is not going to survive, courting new love interests. Settling on one, after a brief courtship they begin their own family and talk of marriage once the war is done. Only, the husband not only survives the war but comes home and is awarded the highest medal for valour.

Of course it's true that the Shapiro regime might ultimately be as successful as the Anthopoulos/Beeston regime, or even more successful in the long run. He's a smart and talented guy. He's won awards, he's reached the playoffs (once -- same number as AA). I don't doubt at all that the Jays will continue to be interesting and fun to follow in the years to come, and that Shapiro will make interesting and praiseworthy moves. I've said that the owners blundered by creating an untenable situation for Anthopoulos, and I stick to that, but don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think it is a grand earth-shattering tragedy or a massive mistake that will doom the Jays for years to come. I do think it is unnecessarily disruptive, potentially negative (short-term) in terms of player relationships and managerial relationships, and it is the loss of a talented guy who had learned lessons and was reaching his peak as a GM. None of that dooms the Jays -- they can recover from this if Shapiro makes smart decisions. The loss of AA is also a PR mistake -- it's bad for the image of the team, and it hurts the fan base. Again, the Jays can recover from that if the team has another exciting season in 2016 and makes the playoffs again. So don't get me wrong, I don't see this as a huge national tragedy, I just see it as a mistake by the owners, an unnecessary loss of a valuable asset, and potentially a setback for the team's future if it can't recover from the disruption.

Having said all that -- I'm still excited for the off-season and the 2016 season! There are a number of player acquisitions that need to be made and will likely be made. Next year's team has huge potential! It could be a great ride again. There will lots of young players and prospects and cagey veterans who will be fascinating to watch again. And the off-season moves and trades and signings over the next three months could be fascinating as well. I'm eager to see how it all unfolds.

Bob McCown: "In retrospect, it was a mistake to hire Shapiro. It was done when they didn't know what this team would be."
(https://twitter.com/Baseball_Jenn/status/659850048138670080)

I would say McCowan was largely sympathetic to Rogers. He painted a picture of reasonable decisions being made that led to an outcome that would have been difficult to predict. He admitted that his first instinct was that the fault was Rogers', but that after research and consideration he arrived at a different conclusion.

Last night was my first time listening to PTS in a long while, and I thought he did a good job unfolding the story.

While the people that actually know what ultimately went into the decision likely number 3-4, I would be careful about simply dismissing media reports. I have no love for the likes of Griffin or McCowan, but McCowan in particular has insight into the Jays and Rogers that few others can claim. Further, I would be very hesitant to ever accuse writers of the ilk of Lott and Arthur of authoring click-bait.

It's pitchers we've always had problems signing to the team because of the brutal division/park we play in. Hitters we have been able to sign over the years, not like there is as many FA hitters in high demand as there are pitchers. But that's why you build a farm system, so those young pitchers have to pitch for you. And many young pitchers he's drafted are pitching all over the league right now for other teams.

For what it's worth, BBRef lists the multi-year park factor for the RC as slightly favouring pitchers. That has not usually been the case for the RC, but BBRef does look at 3 years worth of data for this.

As fans we can all hope that Rogers decides due to the big negative fall out from AA leaving that they need to make a splash to up season ticket sales and hype, thus end up signing Price but not at an insane amount (ie: no more than 7 years, which seems insane to me, or $210 mil) while also giving the new GM $150 or so to spend going forward.

It's the same with AA - an aggressive trader is going to hit HRs
(Wells), SO (Dickey) and let's throw in a fluky inside the park HR
(Bautista - surely this deal, attributed to AA, is a superior fluke to
the Yan Gomes deal). an aggressive 'lock-up the homegrown talent' guy
is going to save money on some guys and blow some elsewhere.

Jerjapan: if you characterize Dickey as a SO, how would you characterize Wells from the point of view of the Angels GM? bases loaded walk of the winning run in WS game 7? hitting into a triple play? I would be more apt to say Dickey was a Sac Bunt or Sac Fly: not the worst outcome, but not the best, or the one you were hoping for, either. It's not like he was Joey "the load" Hamilton, or "he who shall not be named" bad or anything.. He has delivered 3 years of decent innings, and with the option picked up could end up delivering 800 around-league-average innings - around 8.5 bWAR. That's not nothing, like SO implies. Sure, the other guy did better (at least, we think so, now), but I still view the results as better than the Saunders deal (color me surprised if he suits up for more than a handful of games ever for the Jays, and maybe anyone else, ever). How good would JA Happ, even the old ~90 ERA+ version, look under contract for $4-5M next year, compared to NOTHING? Yeah, 5th starter, but at least a guy who has thrown many innings before who could be a swingman, at worst..

In general: my initial reaction was outrage, but after reading lots of comments and thinking about it, well, it's business, it happens. I also left a job I had held for just over a year (small startup, 5 or 6 people at the time). Boss asked me into his office and told me that due to the 2000 crash, I'd have to take a paycut to 5/8 of my previous salary, and work longer hours. Factor in a KW <-> TO commute that was already stretching it, I quit a few days or a week later (it was 15 years ago, some of the details are a little foggy) without having a new job lined up. It happens. Life goes on. Said company is still around - AFAIK, they're around 15-20 people in size now and doing just fine at surviving. I landed a better job within a few weeks that I still wish I had at times..

VW Fan, I'm actually with you on Dickey, I think he's brought real value to the team and I enjoy watching him pitch, and listening to him talk as a fan. I've been calling for the team to pick up his option all year, even when it wasn't popular to do so ... it was more a SO to me from the POV of how quickly TDA and Thor (he could be scary-good) started making major contributions to the Mets, and how it's starting to look like Becerra is way more than a throw-in ... despite missing time with a major injury, he looked strong in high A as a 20 year old this year ...he's ahead of say, Dwight Smith to me.

So how bout Dickey was the succesful sac bunt followed by a HR? Decent strategy at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight ...

Go to Cot's contracts and have a look at the difference between Cleveland and Toronto's "40 man payrolls."

From 2003 to 2005 the Jay's spent (roughly) $5 million more per year. From 2006 to 2010 the Jay's spent (roughly) $19 million more per year and from 2011 to 2014 (2014 is the last year for the final end of year stats on Cot's) the Jays spent (roughly) $32 million more per year. Lots of us have talked about the relative payrolls of Cleveland and Toronto - so I though I'd take a peek at them. Interesting.

Also interesting is that I think Rogers - having completely mishandled the Beesten Boot, the Shapiro Squeeze and the AA Adventure - may NOW actually be caught between a rock and a hard place. Shapiro (allegedly) thinks AA "spent" too many prospects to get Tulo, Donaldson, etal, - fair enough lots of others agree(ish) - or at least are concerned that he "may" have spent too many prospects. NOW - what TO needs to have a SERIOUS run at the World Series again has - at this point - nothing to do with prospects. What the Jays need for 2016 is another injection of about $50 million(ish) to get a Price type, an Estrada type and at least one serious bullpen arm.

The only way I can see Rogers literally not killing the goose (the euphoria the Jays had to end 2015) that was about to lay the golden egg's (multi-thousands of new season ticket holders in 2016 + ever expanding TV viewership) is if they give Shapiro the dosh he needs to keep Price and Estrada (or find similar type guys). Ironically, had AA stayed, I've postulated that AA would have traded more prospects away for one new Ace(ish) pitcher, and just needed to pay for one on the free market. Hilariously, to avoid being run out of town Rogers may have to back Shapiro, and NOT spend more prospects, by spending that which they worship - namely money!

No matter what - the off-season will be an interesting place this year.

He's replacing Beeston, not AA. It's the new GM that will get no credit.

I get the sense that he IS replacing AA, at least at the more critical levels. Fangraphs article below sums what this sounds like to me. "President" (or President of Baseball Operations) is the new GM. GM is now the junior guy. I do remember when Ash (for a few years) had that President of Baseball Operations title.

Yeah, that was a bizarre promotion. Giving Ash more power when he never did well as a GM. His first round draft picks were good, even great at times. He made a couple of good trades but tons of bad to horrid ones.

For me, the more Ed emphasizes that Alex's job would have remained the same, that he tried really hard to give Alex everything he wanted etc., the more suspicious I become of ownership.

Alex says he loved the job, the city, the team and that saw himself being in Toronto for years. Married with the knowledge of a lucrative contract offer and (if you take the article at face value) freedom to make baseball decisions ... why on earth would he want to leave what was seemingly a perfect situation?

Ultimately, I think it comes down to distrust and simply not being comfortable with Rogers and how they do business. It's been reported that senior executives at the company had virtually no dealings with Alex until very recently, something that Alex himself admitted was "a bit weird" in one of the many articles on Sportsnet. Maybe Ed et. all shouldn't have waited until AFTER the Jays' amazing run to engage him. Maybe things would have been different had Ed not fumbled around MLB looking for Beeston's replacement behind his back (but not really). Maybe the promise that his job wouldn't change at all didn't reconcile in Alex's mind with what he was seeing or felt what was natural given Shapiro's profile and skill set.

I think most can relate to simply not wanting to work for a specific boss or executive leadership. The more I hear about how much Rogers was putting on the table for Alex, the more I think about how strongly he had to have felt about working in that environment and for those people. Makes me wonder if he'd have made the same decision if there was no Shapiro and Alex was answering directly to Rogers/Brace.

There were two watershed moments in A.A.'s tenure with the Jays, and both started about the same time. Around the 2014 Draft, A.A. said he was changing how he drafted. I don't think anyone noticed, including myself. So the past two drafts have been made using his new method. People who should move faster or move surer. I might be wrong but that's what it looks like. His second moment followed later that summer. At some point, he looked at the talent on his Team. Very good talent, that continually underacheived, could not stay healthy or both. That's when he started talking about changing the culture of the Jays. He had two of the best in Baseball at their position in Bautista and Encarnacion and some good pitching.

2015 started with Encarnacion and someone new at 1B, someone new at 2B, Reyes at SS, someone new at 3B, Navarro and someone new at C, Bautista at RF, someone new at CF, Pillar in LF, two or three new Bench people, two new Starters and three new Relievers. Is it any wonder the Team struggled? At the trade deadline he added top upgrades at SS, LF, Top Starter, two Top Reliever, and almost got to the World Series.

The facts behind A.A.'s decision not to re-sign don't matter. The biggest worry is that without A.A., they might not get back to the Postseason. The Jays need David Price because a top RHP will not do, a top LHP is needed. The Jays need a Chris Davis at 1B, a top LHB for the middle of the lineup. The Jays need two Top Relievers, at least one LHP. I don't think Shapiro can get it right, because it's $60.0 or more Million in costs, and he might not get there.

We could have used some of this in the ALCS. And I don't just say that because I was at game 4.
(sports.yahoo.com/news/noah-syndergaard-challenges-the-royals-to-a-fight-after-beating-them-in-game-3-072118401.html)

This would look good behind Stroman for the next 5 years.
(www.fangraphs.com/blogs/noah-syndergaards-comps-imply-ace-potential/)

I know following sports, caring about baseball, and being emotionally connected to a team are silly wastes if time. But, to the extent that I dedicate any free time and energy to caring about this sport and this team - I will hate that trade.

"Ultimately, I think it comes down to distrust and simply not being comfortable with Rogers and how they do business."

The one problem with the media's handling of AA, is they didn't challenge him to articulate what it was that he didn't like about 'the fit'. I thought McCowan was really close to it at one point, and then he switched to a series of fluff questions.

"Alex, you said they were generous and did everything they could. What was it about 'The Fit' that led you to make your decision."

*AA Skates...*

"But you didn't answer the question. What specifically about the fit did you not like?"

I would have been happy if the whole interview went on like that. At least it would have probed the one unknown and compelling aspect to the story.

The one problem with the media's handling of AA, is they didn't challenge him to articulate what it was that he didn't like about 'the fit'. I thought McCowan was really close to it at one point, and then he switched to a series of fluff questions.

He was asked multiple times to define what 'fit' meant. When he skated around it, I felt that he ended up answering it anyway just by process of elimination.

He's plainly stated it's not about power - there's an article on SN right now about him not even having to be a GM per se and how he kind of liked Ricciardi taking the spotlight while he worked on building and being creative in the background. He's been clear about the city, about how much he likes the character of the team, about how generous the contract offer was, about feeling wanted ... I mean, what's left?

There were rumblings yesterday that Alex wasn't entirely happy that the details of their negotiations came out, which would be in character (the ninja never reveals!). I just think there is a fundamental disconnect between how Alex would prefer a business to be run vs. how Rogers runs their business.

If there were softballs tossed, I think they were directed at Ed Rogers. It looks like Davidi got quality time - I'd have liked to hear about whether having 5M+ viewers and a packed Dome would impact payroll next year. I'd have liked to hear what made Shapiro such an attractive choice to run baseball, with specific references to his experience running things on a shoestring budget and the kind of corporate culture he would bring to the team.

I'd love for McCown to take a crack at either Rogers or Brace. He's probably the only Sportsnet employee with the balls to direct the conversation where it should go.

Yeah I have come to the same conclusion that he didn't like the way Rogers did business - by process of elimination:
. Don't think it's just scope given Ed Rogers comments, the one year trial period offer, and Shapiro's reputation
. Doubt it's job fatigue.. If he found the GM role too disruptive to his family life he'd have simply stated he needed a couple of years in a lighter role
. Doubt it was dislike of Shapiro since he admitted to a reporter he wasn't sure he would stay even before he met Shapiro
. And it couldn't be aspiratios to the president role since he admitted in an interview he had no interest in the "business side" of that role

All that's left then is likely a dislike of the way Rogers conducted their business. Could be because of the treatment of Beeston, non- interaction with the executive or whatever. Having left a company myself for that reason- despite multiple offers to stay- I can understand that mindset.

Does reinforce early comments on this site though that it may affect FA attitudes to the team, not to mention internal morale and fan enthusiasm. I think these things are much more concerning than losing one good GM.

I know following sports, caring about baseball, and being emotionally connected to a team are silly wastes if time. But, to the extent that I dedicate any free time and energy to caring about this sport and this team - I will hate that trade.

I feel the same way. I didn't like the Dickey trade from the moment I heard who was included, and I still think it was a mistake. That was the move where I started to sour on Anthopoulos, and I was less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after that.

Not only was the Dickey trade bad, but the Marlins trade was a value nightmare. If you think of it logically in hindsight, the Jays had two short-stops under contract. One was making $5m in 2013 with 2 team options for the same annual amount (Escobar), and another SS who was signed out of Cuba and had six years of control left (Hechavarria). The Jays traded both of them to Miami so they could pay Jose Reyes $96m over five years from ages 30-35. That's not even bringing up the other components of the deal. That off-season was pretty bad in hindsight, although at the time it seemed like good intentions (trying to win with Bautista and Encarnacion).

AA redeemed himself with a stellar off-season a year ago (Donaldson, Travis, Martin, etc), but I don't blame Rogers one single second for not trusting Alex long-term. Until August 2015, he was a GM who constructed a .500 team on a top 10 payroll for nearly three consecutive years.

I'm fine with Shapiro taking over. I think it will be difficult for him to work around trying to sustain this level of success and appease all the new casual fans who have jumped on the bandwagon, but for the betterment of the team long-term, he's going to have to. If that means letting Bautista go after 2016 instead of paying him $20m a year from age 36-onwards, then so be it. I've seen 22 years without playoff baseball. Sentimental value no longer exists for me. Just keep the train moving with as few stops as possible. The Level of Excellence will always be there to celebrate the past.

"How would you feel about the Dickey trade if we gave up Sanchez instead of Syndergaard? Because, that would have been a worse trade. You can't use hindsight to evaluate the action, only the results."

I agree with the principal of what you are saying.

But, I do not recall Sanchez being the universal favourite. Many were pointing out the large gap in command at the time. Sanchez was noted to have more 'electric stuff', and many felt he had the higher ceiling. Syndergaard was much more polished, and equipped with a bowling ball fastball and hammer curve.

We don't know yet if Syndergaard will be better than Sanchez. The latter had the best ERA on starting staff when he was injured.....though he could not have kept up with Estrada's 2nd half.

I think many will misplace blame on Shapiro or the new GM if Price does not return when it is likely that AA wouldn't or couldn't bring him back anyway. I think it is more important to bring back Estrada. If not re-signed in the brief post WS window, I would give him the QO.

i think there's evidence that i didn't like the dickey trade at the time, and had more of less seen the situation play out as it has. i think getting rid of aa is a huge mistake for a few reasons:
1) aa's record includes two trades that no one thought were possible until they were made: wells and donaldson.

2)he's from here, WANTS TO BE HERE, is clearly invested in the job, the franchise, the city, and was internally produced, has learned from mistakes...those are people that you should show loyalty to - not just because it's the "right thing to do", but because they're a better bet to spend more time than any sane person should in doing their job at the expense of things like family, self-care, and even money.

3) aa has turned out to be somewhat of an old-school gm when EVERYONE else is just following what friedman or epstein have done. if the jays actually want to win, maybe zagging when everyone else zigs, if a better idea than doing the typical corporate culture move of emulating moves blindly 'because it worked for X'. in a closed system like baseball, niches are created as the herd narrows on one idea or belief - that's perhaps why a team full of contact hitters can win WS: they aren't listening to what the "analysts" currently believe to be the eternal truth.

For the record, I liked Sanchez more. But I was excited to keep both of them.

"I didn't like the Dickey trade from the moment I heard who was included, and I still think it was a mistake."

I remember where I was. I thought d'Arnaud was a bit steep to begin with. My brother told me we threw in Syndergaard, and I laughed at him. I thought my poor brother, who didn't follow the minor leagues, picked up a bad rumour somewhere without realizing how absurd it was.

I don't think it was universal that Sanchez was the higher rated prospect, but I think it was consensus at the time. Both were #50-100 in prospect rankings, which is not a bad price to pay for a pitcher coming off the seasons that Dickey was coming off.

I was uncomfortable with the deal too because of concern over Dickey's voodoo, but I think the price was pretty close to market value.

The trade has the possibility of being worse lost value than the Kent or Michael Young trades, which is saying something,

My biggest confusion about it is what was the plan for 2016 in regarding to pitching. We traded all our internal prospects that were ready for next year. So there were two options in my mind. Put payroll up to a level Rogers was likely never going to be comfortable with, or trade more prospects for non free agent but MLB pitchers. If you do the first than you really have to let one if not both of EE and Jose go after next year, considering the increase in contracts that Martin and Donaldson will be getting.

"....My biggest confusion about it is what was the plan for 2016 in regarding to pitching...."

How is this confusing? There are many simple and obvious solutions. Begin with Stroman and Dickey for two of the five rotation positions. Then take the $20-million that you save from losing Mark Buehrle and invest that in one or two free-agent pitchers or trade acquisitions. Then you sign either Estrada or Price (if not both). If you can't sign either of them, you take the savings from losing them ($12-million in combined spending on Price and Estrada in 2015) and invest it in another free agent or trade acquisition. This gives you at least four good pitchers already. For the fifth pitcher, you open it up to a competition between Hutchison, Osuna, Sanchez and Hendriks. It's easy to get 5 starters with some combination of the above options. There's lots of room for debate about WHICH option is best, but you can't deny that there are lots of options. None of it requires some huge increase in payroll, and none of it requires the trading of top prospects, because you have the financial savings from losing Buehrle and probably Price.

"...I don't blame Rogers one single second for not trusting Alex long-term.
Until August 2015, he was a GM who constructed a .500 team on a top 10
payroll for nearly three consecutive years..."

Your definition of "trust" apparently means "guaranteed playoff spot." There's not a single GM in baseball who can guarantee that they will reach the playoffs, because there are just too many variable factors at play. To inherit a poor organization (with albatross contracts and a weak farm system and a mediocre record) and then transform it into one of the top four teams in the majors within six years is not a bad record. It might not be good enough to satisfy your high standards, but it's not bad.

And the arbitrary cutoff of August 2015 is rigging the metrics to fit your thesis. You can't discount a winning season because the team was at .500 in the first half of the season; that's just blatant cherry-picking. Put it fairly: for three years, the Jays had approximately the 10th highest payroll in baseball, and in one of those three seasons, the Jays were an elite team that came within two games of the World Series and was hugely successful financially and revitalized the fan base. That's not a bad record for three good-payroll seasons. Many teams have spent more and done worse.

Sorry I didn't phrase my comment well China. If the Jays are not going to commit to more payroll (and this has been confirmed) than signing two pitchers to that much cost just takes us back to the payroll we have this year once you include the increases to Martin and Donaldsons contracts. While that works for next year I don't see it being sustainable the year after. At this point Donaldson becomes a 20 million a year player and with the slight increases the rest of the team get I don't think that leaves any room to resign either of Jose or EE.

I guess that solves the pitching, but that means starting 2017 our lineup looks a lot worse with Donaldson presumably still being great but aging Martin and Tulo, not much coming up from the minors (maybe Alford) and losing EE and Jose. I don't know if that team is very good and has a lot of money tied up into declining players.

Donaldson made 4.3 million this year. The Jays have him for 3 more years and he won't be making 20 million.I don't see how arbitration could ever be higher than a QO. Trout made 6 million this year--under contract and is in line for 16 next year. Donaldson will have only 3.1 year of service time. Technically that's his second year of arbitration but what matters is that 4.3 figure and how much of a raise he deserves. I'd guess in the 6-8 range next year and maybe 10-13 in 2017 if he keeps bringing the rain.

This year was Jose's worse defensive contribution since coming to Toronto. He's going to have to move to first base eventually but it's not clear if he's willing to do that or not.

Signing good starters would help to keep the club competitive in 2017, but it's way too early to predict anything. Just winning half of the 1-run games might be enough.

I expect Donaldson's contract next year to be at least 10 million. Ryan Howard won $10 million in his first year of arbitration, way back in 2008 when coming off an (undeserved) MVP. The Phillies had offered $7 million. So now Donaldson will be in his second year of arbitration, coming off an MVP or a runner-up. My guess is the two offers will be $13.5 million from his side, and 10 million from the Jays, if they go to a hearing.

Scott the estimates already released for Donaldson next year is 12 million. The next year he will be in the 20 million dollar range. So your estimates are way under. Obviously lots of stuff could happen. Tulo could be traded for pitching help and that's a move I could see happening.

Believing the Jays have 102 Million dollars attributed for 23 players. Plus the itzuris buyout.
The rumor is that the payroll is $140 million., I believe Rogers could push that to $150 million. The reason is that due to the increase of revenues from the six home games in the playoffs providing $32 million share from ticket sales. Additionally the revenue from parking, F & B as well as game merchanding would add an additional $7.5 million in revenue. That is $40 million in identifiable revenue.
This does not include luxury box rentals and seats. And the advertising that Rogers charged for the 11 games totaling over $50 million in above the line net income .
Will Norris and Boyd recover that $50 million, maybe 3 to 4 years from now.
If the TBJ and Shapiro makes the $50 million in SP for three pitchers or 2 Sp if you plan to keep Dickey and Thole than $40 million.
The team payroll will be around $140-145 million either way.
I don't care if it is Lacava,Shapiro or ifithad been AA, I want the return to a pitching ace and a # 3 SP with the monies that exist and a # 4 if Dickey and Thole is traded.
Additionally , by trading Revere, Dickey and Thole for prospects which will please Shapiro .

Imagine that prior to the Posrseason Magic, Shapiro was hired to lower payroll and perhaps go further.

You don't pickup Bautista's option or Encarnacion's option, but you keep Dickey. Add in Qualifying Offers for Jose and Edwin. Payroll drops to around $85.0 Million and the Jays pickup two more Draft Picks for 2016.

With Pompey, Pillar, Revere and Saunders, there are enough Outfielders to fill available positions. Smoak and Colabello will get steady ABs between 1B and DH and that creates another Bench spot. Signing two Free Agent Starters is easier - spend $50.0 Million and payrolls' back at $135.0 Million. This Team should still make the Playoffs.

So the options are: the above at $135.0 Million or adding to the status quo to about $159.0 Million to $185.0 Million?

I believe you meant to say " add " Justin Morneau since you can't drop a player who isn't on the team. I agree that it's a no-brainer to pick up Bautista and EE's options, as they are underpaid for their production. What will happen to them after that is hard to say as they will be looking for more money at a time when they are getting old ( baseball-wise ) and losing value.

You don't need to be a genius to reduce payroll and not make the playoffs.I don't think that's the goal.

Maybe Rogers brought Shapiro to reduce payrolls or maybe they brought him because he was the best option available. Why would Shapiro want to come to Toronto? Maybe they just pay him more than what he was making, but chances are he wanted to be at the head of a club that had more resources and was associated with success, even if he had to leave his country to do so.

Maybe we could stop calling the Donaldson trade a slam-dunk win for the Jays after only one season. Since the A's made the trade with the future in mind (the way the Mets did when they sent away their reigning Cy Young winner in exchange for prospects) it's not really fair to call the Donaldson trade a win at this point, unless you were all calling the Dickey trade a slam-dunk win for the Jays after one season because at that point he had provided more value than the guys for whom he was swapped.

Maybe that's not fair, since Dickey never lived up to the team's insane expectations for him - how about the Price trade though? The Jays won that one by a mile because not only did Price put up more value than who he was traded for; he was actually even MORE effective for the Jays than expected.

It just seems like the same set of criteria should be used to evaluate these trades, especially since they are all "win now" trades for the Jays.

My personal hope for the Jays' Shapiro hiring is that it's analogous to the BoSox's attempt to hire Billy Beane away from the A's. John Henry wanted to win, he saw a GM consistently putting together competitive teams on a shoestring budget, and he was excited about what the guy might be able to do if given a REAL budget to work with. The Sox sure weren't trying to hire Beane to cut costs.

Rogers has had a brief taste of how many more dollars a winning franchise can pull in over a "competitive" one, and I think they're realizing that investing in the team's budget beyond a certain baseline can have much greater returns than originally assumed/projected. If that's the case, this could actually be the start of a serious run of dominance for the team. Nothing sells like success, but in my experience, stakeholders need to actually see it for themselves before they're willing to commit anything to initially achieving that success, so it can be a chicken/egg issue. Thankfully, Anthopoulos was able to give them (and all of us) a taste of it in the second half of the season, and the results were phenomenal.

Kasi, I acknowledge your input: the about 55 millions saved could have been spent elsewhere to improve the team. However my prospected lineup of October 2015 was based on the the proposition that trades of Reyes and other big names did not arrive without AA's crafty trades. My and Dave's point of views were proving how AA's trade decisions were crucial to the Jays success. Further extension of that lineup lands on fantasy. Obviously that 55 millions could be spent on more players, but it needed to be done without AA's known qualities in trade to prove his decisions were not crucial. For example, without Reyes, whose trade to Toronto was a AA's brainchild, how could Buerhle arrive in T.O. ? If Jays had not built respectable seasonal records, could Russell Martin be signed on simply mutual desire of a Canadian catcher to play for a Canadian team ? Are signing players to T.O. and seasonal records in positive feedback: based on what are discussed on this post, I think so.

Thanks CC. I do think there was other options out there to use that 55 million to provide value for the team.

The main premise of my comments is trying to reconcile the reality of a Rogers imposed 140 million dollar payroll and the players we've acquired. Let's say we do the accepted thing here and sign Price to 30 and someone else to 15. Next year due to JD still only being 12 and the Jose/EE options it works. But in 2017 without resigning either slugger we'd have 99 million dollars invested in five players (Price, Estrada, JD, Tulo, Martin) when your payroll is only 140 million dollars that looks very tight on filling out the rest of the team. Since Jose and EE are both likely looking in the 18+ million range I don't think the budget exists to resign either. Add in there that the majority of our prospects are likely not hitting the majors before 2018 and 2017 to me has a lot of questions unless we trade a Tulo or JD at that point. And if we can't trade them then we have 100 million dollars locked up on players on the wrong side of 30.

No question 2017/18 will be tough years for the Jays to be competitive in unless the new GM does an amazing job or some kids come out of nowhere or Sanchez/Osuna are a great 1/2 punch in the rotation to go with Stroman to give us 3 home grown aces. Unless, of course Rogers opens the floodgates and lets the payroll grow to the $150-175 range with an openness to $200 mil comes 2020.

One thing to remember is that Rogers wants to carry out renovations to the ball park and Shapiro presumably was going to oversee that. I definitely think Rogers is committed to the team, but it's hard to say when they planned to go for it. Were they planning to bring in Shapiro, lower payroll, install new grass/roof and other renovations to the dome and THEN go build a winner? Or were they trying to keep a winner the whole way through?

One thing is for sure, whatever they wanted to do is now changed completely by the final run of the season. If they don't at the very least try to sustain a top 5-10 baseball team going forward, then it ain't going to be pretty...you can only alienate a fan base so many times.

China Fan: "And the arbitrary cutoff of August 2015 is rigging the metrics to fit your thesis. You can't discount a winning season because the team was at .500 in the first half of the season; that's just blatant cherry-picking."

Shapiro was hired some time in August, so he was likely interviewed around July/August, maybe earlier. So no, the August cutoff is not arbitrary; it's when they hired the new team president who they likely knew had no intention of keeping Anthopoulos. Unless you think Rogers should have been able to predict the future and know what was going to happen the two months after engaging in dialogue with Shapiro. They had every right to look for a replacement during that time. The Jays looked like the same mediocre team they've been for nearly 20 years by the time they got into serious talks with Shapiro.

The Jays won 74 and 83 games in 2013 and 2014. They had the 9th and 10th highest team payroll in baseball those years. I'm not sure what their overall payroll was in 2015, some outlets say $125m, but I thought I read that they had to absorb Price's entire salary so it had to be more than that by the end of the season. Regardless, it was a top 10 payroll again even before acquiring Price. At the deadline, they were ~.500. How can you possibly say "trust" means a "guaranteed playoff spot" when they were barely seeing .500 despite giving the GM one of the highest payrolls in baseball? Rogers, for all the crap that they get (some of it earned) is still in the business of making money. Until the final two months of 2015, it wasn't looking like a very good investment, and they were entirely justified in looking elsewhere. Things got muddled only because the Jays went on a great run to end the season, but Rogers could not have predicted that when they were searching for Beeston's/AA's replacement months earlier.

John Northey: "No question 2017/18 will be tough years for the Jays to be competitive in unless the new GM does an amazing job or some kids come out of nowhere or Sanchez/Osuna are a great 1/2 punch in the rotation to go with Stroman to give us 3 home grown aces. Unless, of course Rogers opens the floodgates and lets the payroll grow to the $150-175 range with an openness to $200 mil comes 2020."

That's my fear as well. The team's best prospects are in the lower minors, or just getting a taste of Double-A, and I think it's probably unreasonable to expect them to come in by 2017 and make a difference (Alford, Greene, Tellez, SRF, Hollon, etc). It's going to take some creative moves by Shapiro to find long-term talent while still maintaining a winning team after 2016. The three veterans he can trade all have no-trade rights (Bautista, Encarnacion, Tulo), and you wouldn't want to trade those guys anyway if you want to win in 2016.

It's going to take internal development (one or two of Sanchez, Osuna, Hutchison joining Stroman as a rotation mainstay), and maybe a trade or two for a long-term option. It's certainly possible. I have more faith in Shapiro than most here do, but it's not going to be easy.

Sure that makes sense uo. You can afford EE and Jose if you don't sign Price and Estrada (or two other pitchers combining to 40-45 million dollars) but in that case 2016 becomes a walking time bomb because we have Stroman and Dickey and nothing else proven. Even if Osuna and Sanchez make the move successfully they will have innings limits. If any starter gets injured we have no depth. I don't see how we can compete next year without signing expensive FA pitchers like CF said, and that means saying goodbye to Jose and EE. Unless of course Rogerw allows the Jays to go to a 180 million dollar payroll. Than it works again but Rogers isn't doing that.

Btw that's not plenty of money to fill spots. Your breakdown has 100 million in five players. You spend even 20 million to fill holes and when guys like Stroman, Pillar, Travis, etc get latter into arb or finish it you won't be able to extend them. Basically with a mandated 140 payroll you can get FA pitchers or you can get Jose/EE. I think the best thing is to get one pitcher and keep one of the two sluggers, likely EE.

"....20% of teams win their division every year. Winning it once is no big achievement..."

And yet, in his 9 years as Cleveland's general manager, Mark Shapiro managed to do it only once. So if winning the division is so simple and easy, you'd have to conclude that Shapiro is worse at it than Anthopoulos.

any way u look at it, one of JBo, EE or Tulo will be dealt for pitching, likely one of the first 2 depending upon the status of contract negotiations. Shapiro is not the GM but he will have influence. One thing that is consistent in his history is that he does not like playing with pending FA's. That may be ok with someone like Cecil but I feel safe in predicting that JBO and/or EE have either agreed to new contracts or they start the season elsewhere.

My belief that EE will be kept on extended contract with Joey bats will be QO in 2017.
Cola bello will be your 1st baseman
Saunders will be your outfielder in RF , Alford will be your 4th outfielder.
You will have 2 SP at a $35 Million expenditure total.
This will provide for $140 million payroll.

Could imagine you resign Price only for $30 million and Cecil $5 million for 3 years in 2016. still trade Dickey and Thole in 2016., trade Revere plus
Than in 2018 your SP is as follows:
Price, Stroman , Osuna, Hutchison and Greene.
RP : Sanchez, Cecil, Loup, Hendricks, Perdamo , Tepera and Hollon

I think it's a bit of an incomplete picture to talk about AA's .500 record without commenting on the Pythag records his team was running - it certainly looked like the Jays were unlucky for several years, and Rogers would've been well aware of this. If you feel his pythagorean records weren't good enough, fine, but you can't ignore them.

Most curious to me was the detail that AA had never had a conversation with the Rogers people. That's just poor leadership, or as Doug Smith said today of Rogers (following Griff's statement that Rogers are bad baseball people), they are 'bad people people'.

Shapiro could be awesome - I'll certainly feel a lot better if we promote from within with LaCava say, and if we maintain our draft team (I'm beating a dead horse a bit, but seriously, Shapiro has a dreadful drafting record) - but he's well regarded and has some successes on his resume.

But without AA, this team just got a lot less fun to follow. He's easily my all-time fave sports exec in any sport, and if I was to rank fave jays to follow he's behind only Jose, Josh and Stro.

Also pretty sad to see the preojections that the salary will be kept at the same level as it was this year - Jays fans stepped up and supported a team that has been dreadfully managed for decades prior to the arrival of AA. Holding the payroll steady despite the improved revenues and rejuvinated fan base just seems crass, especially after the AA PR fiasco. I trusted AA and his team - I have no sense one way or the other about Shapiro and I have nothing but disrespect for Rogers.

"Btw that's not plenty of money to fill spots. Your breakdown has 100 million in five players. You spend even 20 million to fill holes and when guys like Stroman, Pillar, Travis, etc get latter into arb or finish it you won't be able to extend them. Basically with a mandated 140 payroll you can get FA pitchers or you can get Jose/EE. I think the best thing is to get one pitcher and keep one of the two sluggers, likely EE."

you keep swirling together a bunch of halftruths to make the scenario sound as bad as possible.

This year we had $80m tied up in our top 5 salaries, and it didn't stop us from anything. Having $95m tied into top 5 salaries 3 years from now will not stop us from anything, either.

Because you can't have 70% of your payroll tied up in 33+ year old declining players. When those players decline and they will the team will be very bad as the remaining 40 million can not field 20 players to make a good team. The team needs to asap get younger and out of some of these expensive contracts. I likely agree with most here that one of our sluggers will be traded.

"....pretty sad to see the projections that the salary will be kept at the
same level as it was this year - Jays fans stepped up and supported a
team that has been dreadfully managed for decades prior to the arrival
of AA....."

I fully agree -- it's sad. Of course, to be fair, there's still a chance that this is an incorrect report and that Shapiro will persuade Rogers to spend more money, but I'm skeptical, given the whole history of the Rogers era. The team's payroll didn't even crack the top 10 in the majors (barely) until 2013, despite the huge potential market in Toronto and Canada. To do the Price and Tulo trades this year, Anthopoulos had to hoard money for the whole year until the trade deadline. He wasn't allowed to go to Rogers and say, "We have a chance to acquire Price and Tulo, can you approve a few extra million dollars so that we can win the division?" No, he had to remove $8-million from his official payroll and hoard it carefully for several months, to ensure that he could spend it without being vetoed by the owners. This is unhelpful penny-pinching by corporate bean-counters. And as you say, the fans have done their part, the finances are strong, the merchandising and TV audiences went through the roof -- why can't the owners look at all of that and increase the payroll?

One of my long-term interests is optimizing pitcher usage. The presence of three pitchers in the bullpen- Osuna, Sanchez and Cecil- who I could see pitching longer stints got me thinking. The point of this comment is not to suggest that Osuna say, is best used in relief, but rather to propose an alternative way of using relievers for a club that finds itself with a particular set of talent. The idea is to get maximum leverage, with a decent innings load, regular work but relatively modest number of appearances.The means is through scheduled relief but of varying length depending on leverage. Let's say Day 1 is an Osuna day, day 2 is a Sanchez day and day 3 is a Cecil day. The pitcher for the day is told that they will close out the game (no matter the score) but might come on earlier depending on the game situation. The relief pitcher of the day comes on to start the seventh if the starter needs to come out and if it is a high leverage situation (game tied or ahead by one run). The pitcher will normally finish the game unless he doesn't have it that days and blows up. The relief pitcher of the day will come on to start the eighth in somewhat numerous circumstances (ahead by one or two, tied and perhaps down one).

There are a couple of advantages- the regular work means a Manager may struggle less to keep the key pitchers busy. The system would also allow pitchers to throw more innings per appearance and probably with higher leverage overall. The seasonal goal would be something like 54 appearances, 100 innings and a leverage of 1.4 or 1.5 for each reliever. It would probably make it easier to go with a 6 man pen. Obviously, it would mean less platoon matching in the late innings- you wouldn't be bringing on Cecil to face a tough lefty in the eighth inning on an Osuna day, but I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

No team is doing anything like this, but I could see it working for the Blue Jays.

Mike, keep dreaming the dream. Your much coveted tandem-start shtick has seen the occasional usage years after you first proposed it. Maybe your reliever optimization model will find itself palatable a decade or so from now.

For now, however, I wonder if the HDH KC model (now the HMD model with one H out with injury?) won't be the plan that gets emulated by more and more teams. In Toronto, that would presumably be CSO unless S and/or O find their way to the starting rotation in 2016 (I am betting no on both). Having a three "shut down" relievers lets even your best starters aim for just 6 innings and gives every reliever a fairly well defined role, something that pro players seem to want.

I have no idea what's right or wrong. Starts are getting shorter. Relief appearances are getting shorter. Individual relievers are logging fewer innings. Maybe this is all a reaction to more information being available (4th time through the order, teams are batting blah blah blah off so-and-so). Maybe the quality of play is higher and every at-bat and inning is more arduous than in years past. Or maybe everyone is just copying everyone else and will continue do so once someone dares to experiment with a new a formula that proves successful, resulting in a movement in that direction.

"....The Jays looked like the same mediocre team they've been for nearly 20
years by the time they got into serious talks with Shapiro...."

Your chronology is still misleading. Long before August 2015, the owners had already given up on Anthopoulos, without giving him a fair chance. They began in 2014 with their ham-fisted bungled pursuit of Williams and Duquette, which did nothing but alienate all sides. (It's clear that Williams or Duquette, with their long GM experience, would have been hands-on baseball-involved presidents in the Shapiro mold, which would have forced AA out.) So, in the fall of 2014, just five years after AA began his job, the owners were pursuing a new president who would, effectively, have forced AA to leave.

Rogers allowed Ricciardi to remain as GM for a full 8 years. Yet they gave up on Anthopoulos after 5 years. Why?

Equally important, AA had to spend his first 3 years essentially cleaning up the Ricciardi mess, including: getting rid of the Vernon Wells albatross contract; expanding the scouting and drafting system; expanding the international scouting; improving the minor-league structure. And his payroll was middle-of-the-pack in those years. He didn't make a serious bid for the playoffs until 2013. So why would the owners give up on him just 2 years after he began seriously trying to get the Jays into the playoffs? It almost seems that the owners didn't understand that prospect development can take many years to pay off, and that high-profile veterans can often decline or get injured, and that big trades often don't work.

Rogers didn't announce Shapiro's appointment until Aug. 31, by which time the Jays season had clearly becoming an overwhelming success, on the field and financially. They might have had a handshake agreement with Shapiro a few weeks earlier, but nothing prevented them from renegotiating the terms of it (before Aug. 31) to avoid friction between their two most important executives.

Nobody in these threads has yet commented on Cathal Kelly's revelation, but it is significant. Kelly reports the details of his off-the-record conversation with Anthopoulos, just six weeks ago, in which AA said he wasn't even sure whether he'd be able to do a Gose-Travis type of trade in the future without getting explicit permission from his bosses. In other words, he had previously had the authority to do inexpensive trades without approval from Rogers or the president, but he suspected that he was on the verge of losing that authority. (AA asked Kelly to keep the conversation off-the-record while the Jays were still in the playoffs -- which indicates pretty clearly that AA had a strong idea that he would be forced out after the playoffs.) To me, this is a clear sign that the owners didn't trust AA and didn't believe that he could make the team successful and that they were stripping some of his authority from him. (Kelly's report is here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/baseball/anthopoulos-bafflingly-allowed-to-leave-jays-in-search-of-right-fit/article27040359/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe)

Further evidence of the bungling by the owners is the unseemly haste with which Rogers has rushed to leak the details of the normally confidential contract negotiations between the GM and the owners (an unfair and rude tactic that AA himself has never done in his own contract negotiations with anyone) -- and then the ridiculous spectacle of Rogers using its own media, Sportsnet, for a dictated article in which Edward Rogers wildly spins his version of events. (Poor old Shi Davidi had to transcribe the interview verbatim without a trace of the normal analytical style that he always uses for baseball matters. It was purely a one-sided Rogers propaganda piece.) In the Sportsnet piece, Rogers claimed that AA under Shapiro would have exactly the same "scope and responsibility" as before -- which is patently absurd, since Shapiro would never have accepted the Toronto job if he had zero authority over baseball operations, and thus AA's "scope" would clearly be reduced a lot more than it ever was under Beeston.

In the Sportsnet article, Edward Rogers lavishly praises AA and says how much they wanted to keep him. It's hard to read this without laughing, since -- if you go back to the Kelly article -- we learn that AA has never even had a
conversation with Edward Rogers or anyone else in ownership (as of six weeks ago). And that AA himself admitted that this was "weird." It's not just weird -- it's just further proof that the owners didn't trust him and weren't willing to give him a fair chance, even on Aug. 31 this year.

(My apologies to those Bauxites who feel that this is now irrelevant and we should now be dropping this subject and moving on to other discussions. You're free to change the subject if you wish. But from my own viewpoint, the evidence of the last few days, in the Kelly and Sportsnet articles, does help us to better understand what really happened, so I feel it's worth noting and summarizing here, for those who might be interested.)

China Fan - you're beginning to p*ss me off! This is the second lengthy piece of yours that I agree with 100%. I find consensus boring, and further it's so good I don't want to risk looking the fool if I just paraphrase your work and regurgitating it. Bah humbug.

Some have mentioned Saunders. Forget Saunders. Mr Saunders, with almost no cartilage in one knee, will not be able to SURVIVE the stress of the marathon's of miles he'd need to run during a season nor will he be able to survive the torque of many thousands of swings over a full season of games and practice. To risk our desperately needed Loonies on this risk would be simply foolhardy. As much as I respect and like the guy.

Peter, with the benefit of hindsight, you would still rather the Jays had not made the trades they made? I find that mindblowing - this was the most exciting two months in Toronto sports in decades.

Kasi, I'd say that most teams out there have 60% or more of their payroll tied up in their top 5 veterans on the wrong side of the aging curve. assuming we do resign price for 30millionx7 years and Estrada at 13x3 (he's not going to get the annual value of the QO on a multi-year deal), in 2017 we see a 33 year old Tulo and a 34 year old martin at 20 million, Donaldson at 31 making north of 15 (i find the 20 million projection too high), Jose at 37 maybe on a 20x3 contract, EE gone as a FA.

that's 120 million for 6 guys, with Hendricks, Hutch, Revere, Loup, Cola, Delebar arb eligible (and only Revere likely to command much - he could easily be dealt) and Stroman, Sanchez, Osuna, Pillar, Travis, Goins, Pompey, Schultz and Tepera at the minimum. some of prospects like Burns, Pentacost, Nay, Greene, Smith, Dean should be ready by 2017 with a whole wave of prospect talent arriving in 2018.

that's around $140 million 2017 for 21 guys on the team at the moment, and 4 spots to be filled by prospects, MLFA and low-rent FA signings. and sooner or later the dollar has to rebound and the damn budget has to rise.

I AM nervous about the lack of starting prospect depth likely to be ready in 2016 /17, but feel that the grim salary picture is being heavily overstated.

Jerjapan when your payroll is only 140 million (and who knows how that changes, it might get worse if the Canadian dollar weakens) you can't have that much of your money in expensive vets. Donaldson will get 12 next arb and then likely up to near 20 million in 2017. Certainly above 20 by 2018.

So if we go by your signings there here is what we have for the 2018 year. Five more years of Price at 30 million, Bautista with two years at 20 million. Martin with two years at 20 and Tulo as well at 20 million. All of them 33 or older and likely all below replacement value. 90 of the 140 budget in four players, add in Donaldson at 20-25 and that's 110 million for five players, none of them younger than 33. That has the potential to be very bad. Players post 33/34 for the most part decline and it can be fast.

If we could convince Rogers to go to 180 million like CF said then that could work. I wonder if what he said from the Cathay article with budget tightness is a clue. Maybe AA realized Rogers wasn't gong to give him the financial support to carry out his vision and that factored in getting out of there.

Anyway that sort of budget leaves very little room for flexibility and trades and signing future free agents given budgetary constraints. That's why I think two things will happen. One is that the FA acquisitions won't be as good as we like. I expect no more than 20-25 million paid, maybe on one guy, maybe on two cheaper options (Estrada and someone like Brett Anderson for example).

I also think that they'll try to get out of one of the expensive contracts they have, most likely for pitching help. (Either Martin or Tulo seems most likely) I would like them to sign Donaldson to a solid contract, but I don't see him accepting anything less than 25 million a year so it will probably not happen. They'll likely just play him through arb years and let him walk.

1) Trade away Dickey and Thole to a team in need of pitching-- This trade opens 2 roster spots. Sanchez and Osuna will then have chances to be part of the rotation, not to mention the likes of Hendriks2) Trade away one 1B (Colabello 1st choice, or Smoak) with Pennington to the Indians for Carlos Santana and one or 2 utility players (Aviles and M. Martinez)-- This trade improves our 1B logjam. The Indians get a true 1B. Santana could improve his strikeouts in Toronto or Buffalo while Navarro and Martin split their PA as catchers, The older utility -- Aviles -- could be another Kawasaki ready from Buffalo. The younger utility can still improve his hitting -- another Izturis when healthy.3) Sell Kawasaki and other underused players to teamKawasaki could return to Japan or South Korea and his trade will earn the Jays some cash.4) Look for takers for Navarro. Once he is gone, Santana is up.

What I ave read, teams are fortunate to add 2 prospects. Jays added for a full season 1. Travis. 2. Osuna 3. Sanchez 4. Pillar 5 . Stroman - still has not provided a full season as of yet.

Next year Jays will add 1. Pompey 2. Hendricks 3. Tepera

So in 2017 , is the main concen for new prospects , because by 2018. , the net prospect wave will be due.

In three years will Pentacost be ready as Martins backup. Will Greene , Reid Foley, Harris and /or Maese ready to be 2 new SP.

So the answer to Shapiro question , did AA trade a few too many SP prospects- is YES. We will be short 1 or 2 SP prospects for the next two years.

Trade Dickey for pitching prospects and the same with Revere plus for another controllable piece. This should ameliorate the concerns of a depleted farm system.

Presuming Rogers accepts that they are a top tier market. -$140 million to $150 million market will become the tradition. Remember $100 million they presently receive is remitted to Rogers from mLB Central in uSD . Over the next two years the monies will increase by 8% annually to each of the teams.

I believe Joey Bats will be offered a QO in 2017 and EE will extended to 3/48 million dollar DH deal similar to Ortiz.

Ultimately Martin will provide two more years of 120 game at catching.

If Shapiro can convince Manfred to provide a financial consideration for the currency issue for a % of the total payroll.

Should Shapiro be successful in this endeavor, than he is worth his position. Remember when the CDN dollar moved to par , Toronto moved to a large market team from receiving revenue sharing benefits

Kasi, just take a look at how many payrolls are tied up in expensive vets around the league! The scenario I outline is on the higher end percentage-wise, but not by much when compared to a whole bunch of contenders right now - Texas, STL and the Giants all spring to mind. It's not the percentage, it's the players you choose to invest in - as we've discussed on this thread and others, Price and Donaldson are exactly the sort of player that you invest in long-term. Martin and Tulo will most likely be on the decline, but that doesn't mean valueless. Estrada could be a value signing ala Bautista's contract a few years back.

"All of them 33 or older and likely all below replacement value"

This is a pretty difficult position to substantiate. You are aware that Bautista is 35 right now, and certainly doesn't seem to be on the decline offensively. a more to a an easier position may be in the cards and that would further mitigate any decline.

Some guys will decline fast, and some will age well. I'm not saying your ideas are dead wrong, but these hard and fast rules (5 guys can't make up 70% of a payroll, over 33 years old and a player is likely below replacement level) seem like a straightjacket similar to the five year FA contract rule under beeston.

And while our payroll obviously could decline, I don't think you'll find many who agree that it will be lower in 2017 - inflation is happening fast in MLB and it's affecting everyone. The dollar is at a fairly low point relative to the US dollar based on some pretty clear historical evidence ... the odds favour a higher payroll in 2017 pretty significantly.

I meant above their contract value. Obviously all will be above 0 war if they're still playing. You know a guy who was a great investment long term and was around the same age as Price will be then? Roy Halladay and then he got injured and then was done all in about one year. Why do we always think our guys will be the ones who age better, that the prospects we traded away had flaws and we kept the good ones and that we can actually get value in trades for people like Dickey and such now.

You just can't predict that stuff. What you can do is look at statistics and aging curves across the league about how players devalue as they age. So yes I agree that one or two of those 33+ guys will likely be still putting out 3-4 war seasons. But you also have to admit that 1-2 guys could be at zero to one war or maybe just injured/declined enough not to contribute. This is especially higher with the group you listed that includes a pitcher, an oft injured shortstop and a catcher which is also a rough position to age in. The stats say very likely (given the 7ish million dollars per WAR that's the going rate now) that group could fall fairly quickly into a level like Reyes last year where they can't perform to justify their contract.

All I'm saying is that when your plan calls for having five players take up over 100 million dollars of payroll, all at an age of over 33 and for two years after that, it will have real costs to resigning/extending our young players and acquiring needed players through FA or trades. Not to mention the risk of tying up so much money in declining assets. And no I've not seen any sign from Rogers that they plan to increase payroll past the 140 they've done for the last three years. And not everyone is the Dodgers. The Yankees for example have a lower payroll now than they did ten years ago.

Trade Dickey? First, what would you get? Full value? What's the price/cost of 200 league-average innings from a FA? Would you get that much? I doubt it.

Right now, assuming we sign/keep Dickey, we're down almost 600 (out of roughly 1000) starter innings (5x200). Trade Dickey, and we're down 800/1000. Only Stroman will be back, and he's never pitched a full season. I'm not sure what kind of rotation those of you trying to trade Dickey are envisioning? Sanchez couldn't handle the load - hoping he can go 200 innings this year is a fantasy. Osuna started faltering towards the end - no way can he go 200. Hendricks seems to only pitch well in low-leverage situations. Yeah, we can pick a bunch of guys off the scrap-heap again. Because that worked so well the last 5 times we tried it. I hear Chien-Ming Wang is glued to his phone, waiting for our call!

It's not like other GMs will "do us a favour" and give us a good deal on a starter - they KNOW we're short pitching, and will squeeze us in any way possible. You think we overpaid for Dickey? If we trade him, I can easily see us paying 20-30% MORE than we get for him, just to get a similar pitcher back.. When you're desperate, you usually have to OVERPAY. That'd be like offering Dickey $20M for next year when we already have a $11M option - except we'd have to pay in prospects, not $$$ - something we're already desperately short on.

I'm not opposed to: try to sign/trade for as many starters as we can get and if we get 5 better than Dickey, let him be a Wakefield kind of guy, or THEN try to trade him. I suggested they try to restructure his contract instead of $11/1 to something like $12/2.. But at this point, you don't trade an asset you'll get less-than-market value for, just to have to then acquire a replacement asset for the same position and pay above market value. That's like selling your house as fast as possible to the first guy who makes a passable offer, just to buy the house with almost the same floorplan and condition across the street for 25% more than you got for your house..

I think some folks may have a slightly inflated idea of the market value of guys like Justin Smoak (a waiver claim) and Ben Revere (two minor leaguers, one of whom the Box pegged as the Jays' 27th best prospect.)

"Your chronology is still misleading. Long before August 2015, the owners had already given up on Anthopoulos, without giving him a fair chance. They began in 2014 with their ham-fisted bungled pursuit of Williams and Duquette, which did nothing but alienate all sides. (It's clear that Williams or Duquette, with their long GM experience, would have been hands-on baseball-involved presidents in the Shapiro mold, which would have forced AA out.) So, in the fall of 2014, just five years after AA began his job, the owners were pursuing a new president who would, effectively, have forced AA to leave."

I was referring to Shapiro only in my timeline, not anyone else, but sure, Rogers did want to get rid of AA a year ago when they went after Duquette. I agree with that. Again, why do you think that was out of line? After 2014, the Jays had finished their 2nd straight season way out of the playoff race despite a top 10 payroll. Rogers had an issue with Beeston, and AA was Beeston's hand-picked guy. They had every right to want someone else in AA's place at the time. It's their money. If they don't feel comfortable with the guy in charge of spending it, then find someone else. I don't agree with how they handled the Duquette situation (it was terrible on the part of Ed Rogers), but the actual concept of replacing AA was perfectly fine if they felt they wanted to go a different direction. It only looks bad now because the team went on a great run from August-onwards, again, a run that they couldn't have possibly predicted and by then they'd likely already had some sort of agreement in place with Shapiro. If they wanted to get rid of AA so badly, then why would one playoff appearance change anything?

Ultimately, they offered AA a deal that HE rejected. Now you can question the sincerity of the contract they offered, and anything else involved in the deal, but in the end, it was AA who walked away from it. He saw the writing on the wall, and moved on. The Jays moved on a year ago. The fans should move on as well. It's over.

When the 2012/13 offseason occurred, A.A. knew he needed 2 Starters and a Big Bat. So those acquisitions could have been Scott Kasmir, Anibal Sanchez and Carlos Beltran. That would have put the payroll at $112.0 - $115.0 Million range for 2013. I could speculate that from this the Jays might have won a Wild Card Berth, but even without that payroll was unlikely to be frozen in 2014. But a strange things happened that season and prior offseason. Scott Kasmir agrees to an extension when he hears he would be traded to Toronto, so that deal falls through. Paul Beeston vetoes the Sanchez deal as exceeding his 5-year policy. Beltran turns down the Jays big offer to take a lot less money to play in St. Louis - something about turf.

The Miami deal occurs and A.A.'s bad luck continues when the main reason for the deal, Josh Johnson's career collapses. From that point on, Rogers froze payroll until A.A. could get out from under after 2014. One offseason acquision and the ability to take on money and the Jays could have been in the postseason in 2014. It possible that about that time A.A. soured on working for Rogers, which might be about the same time they decided they were finished with him.

The two things that kept the Jays from being in the Postseason prior to this year are Beeston's 5-year policy and Rogers incompetence as Baseball owners. Their inability to imagine/conceptualize how magical winning could be limited so very much for this Jays.

Maybe now they know. But it cost them respect. Anthopoulos. Beeston and Billions in possible earnings. For the fourth largest market in North America and a Mega-Corp owner, having a budget was ridiculous. They must at least be in the Postseason in 2016, but to do that there must be no budget, no restrictions. Winning should now be a priority.

Could have been, the main point you make. You seem to absolve AA from all blame.
Rogers has a budget , unlike George Steinbrenner, it was a personal business, this team TBJ is owned by a corporation.
The difficulty is that each division must make a profit, and no Rogers don't consider the TBJ will make billions of dollars due to cross-brand marketing

When the 2012/13 offseason occurred, A.A. knew he needed 2 Starters and a Big Bat. So those acquisitions could have been Scott Kasmir.... Scott Kasmir agrees to an extension when he hears he would be traded to Toronto, so that deal falls through.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's certainly not the 2012-13 off-season. Scott Kazmir (that's a "z)" was released by the Angels way back in June 2011. That left the Angels on the hook for the $14 million left on his contract, and made Kazmir a free agent. He remained a free agent for the next year and a half, pitching in independent leagues, because everyone assumed he was washed up. And with good reason.

I've not seen any sign from Rogers that they plan to increase payroll past the 140 they've done for the last three years

I agree with your assessment, but I don't know why anyone would just give Rogers a free pass on that. We have a team right now that took the World Series champs to 6 games in the ALCS, while generating huge numbers in attendance and record setting TV numbers. If Rogers isn't willing to bump payroll a bit for next year, they deserve to be harshly criticized for it.

Absolutely Ryan C. Rogers managed to kill that buzz pretty much instantly with the AA fiasco, the subsequent attempts to spin it as AA's choice as if they were model employers, and now the news that we fans - that put extra money into Rogers pockets - are quite likely getting an inferior product next year to the one we supported? presumably, with FA costs inflating, the same payroll = less talent, and a conservative new president who 'scolded' the most successful GM in Toronto since Gillick = less talent added at the deadline (AA's strategy for fielding a winner with a strict payroll limit.

"Because you can't have 70% of your payroll tied up in 33+ year old declining players. When those players decline and they will the team will be very bad as the remaining 40 million can not field 20 players to make a good team. The team needs to asap get younger and out of some of these expensive contracts. I likely agree with most here that one of our sluggers will be traded."

Bautista and Encarnacion both have no trade rights, and neither one has any incentive to accept a trade elsewhere when they know they can pad their numbers at RC for one more season before they head into free agency. Both also seem to like Toronto and the team is coming off an ALCS appearance. I doubt Shapiro would be able to move them even if he wanted to.

Tulowitzki is the player to watch. He has a no trade clause but has only been in Toronto for a few months and may be more open to a trade if he can go somewhere he prefers to be. Of course the Jays would be selling low on him, and there won't be many takers to begin with when factoring his contract, but if Shapiro had to move someone with a big contract, I think Tulo is the one who will go. Getting $100m of value out of Tulo in his 30's over the next five years is questionable, even though short-term he should help a lot. It really depends on which direction Shapiro decides to go.

I can't see any scenario in which Shapiro comes in for a tear-down. Why? Our window has another year in it. If the team stumbles, than it's an easy tear-down to justify to the fans, and the next crop of prospects is that much closer. one of EE / Jose comes back for 2017 as the face of the franchise or we get to comp picks - trading them now would be ballsy to the point of verging on outrageous to the fan base. Tulo wasn't great when we got him, so we immediately turn around and try to sell him at a low point? This is one of the elite players in the game at a premium position - even if a tear-down is a primary goal (a big if) you want him to rebuild some value. He could be a monster in the Dome.

we have a budget that allows for a full starting rotation next season - we could go with mid-tier guys and cheaper vets on shorter deals and roll the dice if the new regime views Price as too much dough.

I agree with you uo that EE and Jose won't be traded this year. They're likely on too good of deals. But I don't expect both to be extended unless one of them gives the Jays a discount deal. I expect them to be given QO for sure but I am expecting at this point in time for us to lose one if not both, depending on how aggressive the Jays are this offseason in acquiring FA pitchers. The more they spend this offseason, the less the chances they'll retain either slugger.

Tulo I think is the most likely player to be traded, given his comments on not fitting in here. Whether we can get a great deal for him I'm less sure on, but he clearly still has value.

All this talk about trading away high salaried players seems nuts to me at this point. The Jays are one year away from having all but 2 contracts cleared from the books. Next winter the only guys with guaranteed contracts will be Tulowitski and Martin. I suspect the Jays will try to get Donaldson to sign a 5 year deal although this looks to be a bad time to try to do that but given salary escalation in MLB 5 years $130 mil might be possible since he is still in arbitration years and might be a bargain in 3 years when he is scheduled to hit free agency - this takes him through his age 34 season so he'd have one more big contract and he'd be guaranteed a chunk of cash now rather than waiting 3 years and hoping to stay healthy.

Generally it is a bad idea to sign a guy past age 32, and 35 is a big red flashing light while 40 is sirens going off as well. Bautista will be done his age 35 season after next year so signing him big time would be a big mistake potentially unless he signs a surprisingly team friendly contract. Encarnacion just finished his age 32 season and is almost a pure DH now so he also is into the danger years. So I expect the Jays to lose one or both of them after next season, with Qualifying offers made just to try to get a draft pick and if they take the QO then offer it again after that winter and so on until they no longer are worth it.

Thus this winter the only long term non-free agent deal I'd chase as the Jays is Donaldson and even there keep it to 5 years or whats the point - buy out 2 years of free agency, or just keep going year to year.

The rotation & pen are going to be a mess to figure out as there are so many moving pieces right now. If Cecil had not got hurt the Jays might be celebrating their 3rd World Series title. Hawkins is gone, Lowe is a free agent, Buehrle might be retired, Estrada & Price are highest bidder guys now. Lots of top prospects who we expected to be in the rotation/pen next year (Norris, Boyd, Castro, Hoffman) are gone now. Expect lots of AAAA guys signed to fill up AAA and provide stopgaps. Not sure what to expect otherwise.

Tony LaCava has reportedly been named the GM to replace Anthopoulos. My quick reaction: this does help to reduce the damage caused by AA's departure. There will be less disruption than if a totally new guy was brought in from outside.

I hadn't heard that yet China, and yes indeed, great news. LaCava has been a GM prospect for a while and we may be lucky he's still here. Had Shapiro brought a GM with him from Cleveland, that would seem to indicate a desire to make more radical changes. To me, this signals a desire to maintain the direction we are on and makes sense for all parties - LaCava has experience with the Expos and the Indians, and an interest in sabremetrics. He is not one of the young gun GMs at 54, but is clearly experienced and young enough to be with us long term.

He has been in charge of player development, which is not necessarily a strength of the org, but overall, good move.

At his press conference, Shapiro is saying all the right things: Gibbons and the rest of the coaches will return; no dogmatic 5-year limits on contracts; the July deadline deals were good; the farm system is still good but requires further enriching. He can talk the talk, although we'll have to see if he can walk the walk.

It's clear, however, that AA was correct in his fears of losing autonomy under Shapiro. Shapiro has just stated that the GM's job is merely to make "recommendations" to the president. That would represent a major loss of autonomy for Anthopoulos, compared to his situation under Beeston. I don't think there can be any further mystery about why AA is gone. His job had changed radically: he would be merely a submitter of "recommendations" to Shapiro.

Well Northey I agree with you on Jose and EE. But I was responding to people who wanted to resign at least one if not both of them. If the idea is to just let them walk and keep Tulo and Donaldson than I'm all for that. But that is not what people here were proposing. They wanted to get pitching, to keep the guys we acquired and to resign those guys. The money doesn't exist to do all 3 so something has to give.

I don't get all the Revere hate. He's a league-average hitter who plays stellar defence in LF and solid in CF. He doesn't walk much? Who cares, he leads the league in hits. He doesn't hit for power? Well, I guess that makes him one of about three guys in the Jays lineup who doesn't. Big deal. A guy who consistently puts up a 100 OPS+ without any of the power component is actually a considerable asset, and he does it pretty cheap to boot.

Best of all, Revere in left pretty much guarantees that Colabello doesn't get to blunder around out there, which adds back the 2.5 wins Colabello takes back with his glove. Add that to Revere's 2.6 and you have a 5 WAR player in the aggregate. Heh.

Seriously though, one would think the team would like to see Pompey holding his own in the majors and/or Saunders returning to health before even thinking about ditching an asset like Revere. The Jays don't have any surplus outfield depth unless Pompey takes a step forward - possible but not worth betting on when you already have a Revere on the roster. Carrera hasn't looked great anywhere defensively and is likely to regress at the plate next year as well.